Hindu bank manager killed in Kashmir in wave of assassinations

A Hindu bank manager was shot and killed inside his office in Kashmir on Thursday, police said, as a wave of targeted killings drove more Hindu families to flee India’s only Muslim-majority federal territory.

Vijay Kumar was attacked by a suspected militant inside a branch of the Ellaquai Dehati Bank in southern Kashmir’s Kulgam, where a schoolteacher was shot dead on Tuesday, local police said.

“He received grievous gunshot injuries in this terror incident,” Kashmir police said in a tweet, later adding that Kumar, originally from western Rajasthan state, had succumbed to his wounds.

At least 16 people – both Hindu and Muslims – have been killed in targeted attacks this year in Kashmir, where India has been fighting an armed insurgency since the late 1980s.

A little-known militant group called “Kashmir Freedom Fighters” claimed Thursday’s attack on social media, telling non-locals not to settle in the Kashmir valley.

“Anyone involved in the demographic change of Kashmir will meet the same fate,” said its statement, the authenticity of which could not be immediately verified by Reuters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019 split Jammu and Kashmir, then India’s only Muslim-majority state, into two federally administered territories, promising to improve development and security in the restive region.

Both India and neighbouring Pakistan claim the Himalayan territory in full, but control only parts of it.

But New Delhi’s reorganisation raised concerns among some local communities that the federal government may use it to alter Kashmir’s demographic by bringing in more outsiders.