Hundreds of mourners turn up to receive Rajni’s body
Avtar Bhat
SAMBA, May 31 A pall of gloom descended on Nankay Chak village in Samba district after hearing the news about killing of Rajni Bala, wife of Raj Kumar, a school teacher in village Gopalpora in Kulgam district of South Kashmir by militants this morning.
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The heart rendering scenes were witnessed in the village as neither her inlaws nor relatives and the villagers had ever thought that Rajni Bala who had gone to Kashmir to serve as a teacher will not come alive from there.
Soon after hearing the news, the relatives and other villagers rushed to Rajni Bala’s residence in Nankey Chak and tried to console the grief stricken family members who were sobbing and wailing and could not understand what has happened to their daughter-in-law.
Rajni Bala, 36, sustained injuries when terrorists fired at her in Gopalpora area of Kulgam where she was posted as a teacher.
She was critically injured and rushed to a hospital where doctors declared her dead on arrival.
The residents of village Nankey Chak began gathering at the residence of Rajni Bala to mourn her demise as news about her killing spread like a wildfire.
The heart rendering scenes were also witnessed in the village in the evening after the dead body of martyr Rajni Bala was brought from Kulgam in an ambulance. The sobbing relatives of the martyr were totally shocked after seeing the wailing daughter of the couple, Sana Attri, an eighth class student along with her father Raj Kumar accompanied the martyr’s body.
Hundreds of mourners assembled in the village to shoulder the dead body after it was brought down from the ambulance.
Her brother-in-law Ramesh Kumar said that the couple was serving in Kashmir valley for over a decade and they had requested the CEO Kulgam a number of times about their adjustment in the same school in view of the security scenario prevailing in the Valley but he turned down the request every time.
Later, they took up the matter with DC Kulgam who approached the Director School Education, Kashmir and he issued their adjustment orders in the same school. The couple had received the order yesterday through WhatsApp and when Raj Kumar dropped Rajni Bala in Gopalpora High School this morning to get reliving letter within half an hour he received a call from school that his wife has been fired upon and she has been hospitalised.
Raj Kumar rushed to the Hospital and he was shocked to see his wife lying in a pool of blood.
The villagers have taken serious exception to the callousness of the authorities in the Valley and demanded a thorough probe into the killing of Rajni Bala and action against the officer who turned down the adjustment of the couple in the same school or in the Municipal area to ensure their security.
Vijay Kumar said the family was requesting Rajni and her husband to move to Jammu but they were not agreeing to it unless shifted by the Government.
Notably, both Rajni Bala and her husband Raj Kumar were engaged as teachers around 13 years ago under a reservation package by the then Government.
“We were telling them that the situation in the Valley is not good but they expressed helplessness and insisted on continuing at the place of posting,” he stated.
Rajni’s father-in-law Ram Lal said: “We kept requesting them to take up the matter at the right quarters and get posted somewhere in Jammu region. Security arrangements are the prerogatives of the Government and it is up to them to assess the vulnerability of the situation”.
The slain teacher is survived by her husband, daughter and in-laws family in Samba district.
DC Samba Anuradha Gupta, DIG Jammu-Samba, Kathua Range, Vivek Gupta, SSP Samba, Dr Abhisheik Mahajan, DDC chairperson, Samba Keshwa Dutt Sharma, DDC member, Ramesh Kumar and senior political leaders of BJP rushed to the village to receive the dead body.
The cremation of the martyr will be performed in the Nankey Chak cremation ground tomorrow morning, family said.
Meanwhile, the irate activists of various social and political organisations and trade bodies held a massive protest at Samba this evening and blocked the National Highway for some time to show their resentment against the selective killing by militants in Kashmir and termed it a barbaric act. The protestors demanded that those responsible for killing of Rajni Bala should not be spared and be given a capital punishment .
The Beopar Mandal Samba has given a call for tomorrow’s bandh in protest against killing.
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