The death of a Kashmiri trucker on Sunday put the Valley on the boil with separatists calling for a shutdown. Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed termed the killing “dastardly”.
“One more precious life has been lost to the politics of hate and intolerance that is posing a grave challenge to the State and the country’s plurality,” he said.
Mr. Sayeed said, “Under no circumstances shall those guilty of this barbaric crime be allowed to go unpunished.”
Hours after the death of Zahid Ahmad Bhat (24), who received 70 per cent burns in an attack by a mob in Udhampur on October 9, five of the seven accused were booked under the stringent Public Safety Act in Jammu.
The accused tried to set on fire at least three Kashmiri truckers on a day when Udhampur was on the boil over the discovery of abandoned carcasses of three cows, later found to have died in an accident.
Opposition National Conference working president Omar Abdullah, also former Chief Minister, blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the death. “The honourable Prime Minister passed the buck on Akhilesh Yadav and the UP government in the Dadri incident. Who will he blame for Zahid’s death now?” he wrote on the Twitter.
“Another needless death in the name of #BeefBan for which the BJP & its affiliates including allies are directly responsible,” Mr. Omar Abdullah said.
He alleged that Bhat was attacked “just because he was a Kashmiri Muslim trucker, can’t even claim he had beef in his home.”
The news of Bhat’s death sparked spontaneous protests in south Kashmir. Separatists also reacted angrily over the death and blamed the PDP-BJP government.
“The so-called rulers of Jammu and Kashmir are directly responsible for this murder as they in their lust for power have handed over the State to fanatics of the RSS. Indian Muslims are also under attack from these forces and recently two innocents have been murdered by these chauvinists backed by the rulers at Dadri and Himachal Pradesh,” alleged JKLF chief Yasin Malik.
Mr. Malik, besides Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani, have called for a shutdown on Monday. All examinations have been postponed by Kashmir University.
“Murder is a clear indication of the nefarious designs the communal elements and rightwing fanatics have for Kashmir and the Kashmiris have every right to express their anger and outrage against it by observing a shutdown. The so-called government of Jammu Kashmir has miserably failed to provide protection to the hardworking Kashmiri youth,” said the Mirwaiz, who heads a faction of the Hurriyat.
Shabir Shah, another senior separatist leader, asked Mr. Sayeed “to end alliance with the BJP.”
PDP leader and MP Mehbooba Mufti, along with senior PDP Ministers, received the body of Bhat in Srinagar in the afternoon. She called an emergency meeting of party leaders on Monday. “She will assess the coalition government’s functioning and deliverance,” said a source close to the party.
No BJP Minister has condemned those who killed Bhat so far.
