Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and Vice President of the National Conference Omar Abdullah Thursday questioned the tall claims made by the Union government about restoring normality in the Union territory after the Abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A.
Interacting with the media persons here at Sher-e-Kashmir Bhawan on the sidelines of a day-long party convention Omar said that targeted killings have been taking place for the past 2-3 years and blamed the BJP-led government for their failure to maintain law and order in the state.
“We are grieved that two people were shot in Srinagar. This is condemnable. These kinds of targeted killings have increased in the past 2-3 years. This shows that the situation is not as the government says. They said that all of this would stop as soon as Article 370 was abrogated. They cannot blame us now. This is their failure,” he told the reporters.
Two migrant workers hailing from Amritsar were targeted from a close range by unidentified terrorists in the Shaheed Gunj area of Srinagar late Wednesday evening. A sikh carpenter identified as 31-year-old Amritpal Singh was killed on the spot while another person identified as Rohit Masih succumbed to his critical injuries early Thursday morning in the SKIMS, Soura.
This is the first incident of targeted killing of non-local workers in Srinagar this year.
In 2023, a total number of 14 civilians were killed in different incidents of terrorist-related violence while 31 were killed in 2022, 41 in 2021, 38 in 2020, and 44 in 2019 across J&K. Between 2019 and 2023, a total number of 247 security personnel sacrificed their lives while neutralizing 818 terrorists during the same period.