Avtar Bhat
JAMMU, Oct 7: A pall of gloom descended the locality of Deepak Chand Mehra in Patoli Mangotrian here who was gunned down in Eidgah area of downtown Srinagar today along with School Principal, Satinder Kaur with wailing and sobbing family members saying Kashmir is a hell for them.
“Our daughter had asked him not to go. See what has happened,” says Sangeeta, the distraught wife of Deepak Chand, a school teacher who was shot dead by militants in the Kashmir valley today.
“He had dropped us home in Jammu and returned to Kashmir just a few days back. My life and family have been ruined,” she said.
His daughter does not know what happened to his father and she still considers that he is on duty. “What answer we will give to her when she asks where her papa had gone” said another woman in grief.
Chand, a teacher at the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Eidgah in downtown Srinagar, was shot dead at point-blank range by militants around 11.15 am just when the school had settled down to another day of online classes.
With this, seven civilians have been killed by militants in the Kashmir valley in five days.
Scores of people gathered at Chand’s residence in Patoli area here as his family members, including his mother, struggled to come to terms with their loss.
The grief quickly turned into anger for some of the family members.
“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 brother Ashwani Kumar said.
“They (militants) have killed my brother. He has a three-year-old daughter… The Government should give us justice,” said Chand’s brother, Vijay.
He demanded that the Government should provide security to all Hindus working in the Kashmir Valley before it is too late.
“We were asked to return to Kashmir as Government will provide jobs to us in their homeland” said his another relative. “They are sending us to Valley for killing. Of what use such jobs are to us when we have to work in Valley at the cost of our lives”. The entire family was in a deep grief and shock. The tampers ran high and words fail to console them. The gathering there was unable to control their emotions and sentiments asking what sin Deepak and the Principal had committed.
They said “Who says Kashmir is a heaven as it has turned a hell for our entire family whose promising member was snatched by the terrorists leaving us in grief and pain”.
The relatives and neighbors of Deepak gathered there said that this is a tragedy for the family as they had never thought that their son will have such a quick end. They said that the two teachers were segregated and killed selectively which is horrifying.
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 militants, triggering their exodus from the Valley.
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 ‘chaat’ vendor, Virendra Paswan from Bihar, was gunned down elsewhere in the city. Almost simultaneously, another civilian, Mohammad Shafi Lone, was killed at Naidkhai in Bandipora.
Three days before that, militants shot dead Majid Ahmad Gojri, at Srinagar’s Karan Nagar locality. Later that Saturday night, they gunned down Mohammad Shafi Dar at Batmaloo.
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