A Sarpanch affiliated with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Kulgam on Friday. “At about 8:50 pm, terrorists fired upon Shabir Ahmad Mir near his residence in Adoura in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district,” one of the officials said.
They said Mir was taken to a hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival. A BJP leader, Shabir Ahmad Mir’s wife, Nusrat, is also a sarpanch.
MS DH Kulgam said that he had received a bullet in the abdomen and was brought dead at the hospital. Mir was an independent sarpanch.
The area has been cordoned off and a hunt launched to nab the attackers, the officials said.
Reacting to the attack, J&K BJP spokesman Altaf Thakur said, “Strongly condemn yet another barbaric and cowardice act wherein another public representative and the grassroots worker Shabir Ahmed Mir was killed at Odoura, in Kulgam district of South Kashmir. It’s an attack on democracy and such attacks won’t be tolerated.”
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This is the second incident of killing a sarpanch in Kashmir in less than 3 days. On March 9, Militants barged inside the house of a Sarpanch Sameer Ahmad Bhat and shot him dead at the Khonmoh area in the outskirts of Srinagar.
Earlier in February, another independent panchayat member, Mohammad Yaqun Dar from Kulgam was killed at his village.The mainstream political parties have attacked the J&K administration, accusing it of not doing enough to protect the panchayat representatives.
In last one week, there has been a spurt in terrorist incidents across J&K. On Wednesday, there was an IED attack in Udhampur town in Jammu region in which one person was killed and 14 others were injured.
On Sunday, terrorists threw a grenade in a busy marketplace in Srinagar killing two people and injuring 38 others.
(With inputs from agencies)
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