"Our Daughter Asked Him Not To Go Out": Wife Of Teacher Killed In Kashmir

"Our daughter had asked him not to go. See what has happened," says Sangeeta, the distraught wife of school teacher Deepak Chand who was shot dead by terrorists in Kashmir on Thursday.

"He had dropped us home in Jammu and returned to Kashmir just a few days back. My life and family have been ruined," she says.

Chand, a teacher at the Government Boys' Higher Secondary School in downtown Srinagar, was shot dead from a close range by terrorists around 11:15 am just when the school had settled down to another day of online classes. The school principal Supinder Kaur was also killed.

With this, seven civilians have been killed by terrorists in Kashmir in five days.

Several people gathered at Chand's residence as his parents and family members struggled to come to terms with their loss. Their grief quickly turned into anger.

"The government says Kashmiri Hindus can return to the valley. Deepak had gone back to his homeland as a teacher. In return, he got this reward," Chand's cousin Ashwani Kumar said.

"They (terrorists) have killed my brother. He has a 3-year-old daughter. The government should give us justice," said Chand's brother, Vijay.

He demanded that the government provide security to all Hindus working in the Valley before it is too late.

The family members said that the spate of civilian killings - the worst since Jammu and Kashmir's special status under Article 370 was revoked in August 2019 - reminded them of the 1990s when minorities, especially Kashmiri Pandits, were targeted by terrorists, triggering their exodus from the valley.

Chand, a Hindu, and Kaur, a Srinagar-based Sikh, were killed two days after The Resistance Force, a shadow outfit of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the deaths of three people on Tuesday.

Makhan Lal Bindroo, a prominent Kashmiri Pandit and owner of Srinagar's most famous pharmacy, was shot dead at his shop on Tuesday evening. Minutes later, a street food vendor Virendra Paswan from Bihar was gunned down elsewhere in the city. Almost simultaneously, another civilian, Mohammad Shafi Lone, was killed in Bandipora.

Three days before that, terrorists shot dead Majid Ahmad Gojri at Srinagar's Karan Nagar locality. Later that Saturday night, they killed Mohammad Shafi Dar at Batmaloo.