Ganesh Kendale
SRINAGAR: A 19-year-old barber named Shubam Kumar from UP’s Bijnor suffered a gunshot wound in his right arm in a terrorist attack at Batagund village in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district Thursday morning. Kumar was rushed to a hospital in nearby Tral, where officials confirmed he is out of danger.
This marked the third targeted attack on migrant workers in Kashmir valley within a week and the sixth this year.
The attack followed a pattern of recent violence, reminiscent of the mass shooting Sunday evening when Pakistani terrorists stormed a tunnel-construction company’s campsite on Srinagar-Leh highway in Ganderbal district, leaving seven people dead.
The shooting claimed the lives of a doctor from Budgam district in Kashmir, an architectural engineer from Jammu, three workers from Bihar, and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. It was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the Union territory in 2024, following the June 9 ambush on a pilgrim bus in Reasi district of Jammu division, which killed nine people.
Targeted violence against migrant workers has seen a troubling rise in Kashmir lately, evoking memories of 2022 when 29 fatalities were reported, including five Kashmiri Pandits.
Earlier on Friday, the bullet-riddled body of a 30-year-old migrant worker from Bihar’s Banka district was found in a maize field in south Kashmir’s Shopian district. Police said he was abducted and killed by terrorists.
On April 8, a tourist cab driver from Delhi was critically wounded in Shopian, while a 35-year-old migrant worker from Bihar was fatally shot in Anantnag on April 17. In Feb, two men from Punjab were shot dead in Srinagar.
The uptick in terrorist activity in Kashmir valley followed a relatively quiet 2023 when off-duty police officers were primarily targeted, with exceptions such as the fatal shooting of a labourer from UP in Pulwama on October 30.
