PICTURE SPEAK

TRAGIC END: A labourer shot dead by militants in Budru

Kashmir appears to be on the boil again and it has nothing to do with an unusually warm summer. While the state government strove to maintain normality-an Indo-Pak Sufi music festival was held in Srinagar last week-militants were hell bent on undermining the peace effort. A gruesome massacre of labourers in South Kashmir on Monday, triple blasts in Jammu to frighten Amarnath pilgrims and massive protests over the alleged desecration of a mosque in the frontier district of Kupwara ensured that the Valley was in a constant state of turmoil.

Fifty-year-old Abdullah Teli had just finished feeding labourers in Hangulbuch village in the Kulgam area of south Kashmir on Monday afternoon. They were 14 of them-12 Nepalese and two from Bihar. Suddenly, six militants appeared on the scene. Allowing the labourers to finish their meal, the heavily armed gunmen took them to Budru village, an hour-long trek away. The labourers were then asked to line up and were indiscriminately fired upon. Seven died on the spot and six others were wounded. Two succumbed to bullet injuries on their way to hospital and one Nepali managed to escape. "I pleaded with them to let the labourers go, but they took all of them away. I heard of their massacre on the radio news bulletin at 7.30 p.m.," Teli said.

Akshay, 25, a Nepali labourer who sustained bullet injuries, and is admitted in SMHS Hospital, Srinagar, says he doesn't understand why they were targeted. "We told them that if they let us go, we'll return to our country. But they kept pushing us throughout the walk. Then they sprayed bullets on us," he said.

After making a quick escape from the massacre scene, they reportedly snatched two weapons from policemen on duty in Mujmarg village, a few kilometres away. And before the massacre, two militants from the same group had abducted Mushtaq Ahmed Sheikh, an army man on leave, from Hangulbuch. He was beheaded in nearby Kokergund village.

While migrant labourers have been targeted before, what is new is the belief of the security establishment, on the basis of eyewitness accounts, that the Budru massacre was carried out by Hizbul Mujahideen. Police believe that the attack could be in retaliation to the killing of top Hizb militant commander Mushtaq Ahmed Wani alias Khalid recently in south Kashmir. "The massacre has to be seen in the local context," said a security official. No militant outfit claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the United Jihad Council, the umbrella body of various militant groups operating in Kashmir, which also includes Hizbul Mujahideen, condemned the massacre of labourers. Known for its image-conscious approach, which officialdom largely ascribes to their indigenous Kashmiri composition, the attack seems like a departure from the ways of Hizb, sending out signals of unpredictability.

PICTURE SPEAK

RISKY TERRAIN: Pilgrims on their way to Amarnath

The three deadly attacks on tourists following the Srinagar roundtable conference chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month has resulted in a significant drop in tourist inflow. The Budru attack has come at a time when the Amarnath pilgrimage has just begun, with pilgrims passing through areas not far from the site of the massacre. This has forced the government to hand over the security charge for the pilgrimage to the army.

The atmosphere in the state is already charged owing to allegations of desecration of a mosque in north Kashmir. Large-scale protests on this issue had forced the authorities to clamp curfew in the district last week. In the adjacent district of Baramulla, militants fired at a police party on Monday, killing two of them in apple town Sopore. Last month, alleged army informers were warned through posters pasted in the town. Two of the informers were fired at in the main market. One was later killed while he was under treatment in a Srinagar hospital.

Well-placed defence sources view the renewed militant strikes as the co-ordinated and synergised work of various groups active in the Valley. "All militant groups seem to be working in co-ordination, which was not the case earlier," these sources argued.

The triple blasts in Jammu on the eve of the beginning of the Amarnath pilgrimage on Monday, which left one person dead and over two dozen wounded, cannot be seen in isolation either. This new scenario poses a dual challenge to the state administration-to restore the confidence of tourists and to ensure an incident-free pilgrimage.

Index