Cancelling all his prior appointments, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani rushed Surat airport on Tuesday to receive dead bodies of the seven Amarnath pilgrims who were killed by terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir on Monday night and declared compensation to victims’ family members as well as injured pilgrims.
Accompanied by Deputy CM Nitin Patel and Gujarat BJP president Jitu Vaghani, Rupani said that the Gujarat Government would give Rs 10 lakh to kin of the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims and Rs 2 lakh to those who got injured in the terror attack. In the morning a special Indian Air Force aircraft landed from J&K with 51 pilgrims along with dead bodies of seven pilgrims killed in the attack. Among the pilgrims arrived 17 were injured.
Sources at the Surat airport informed that in the terror attack out of the seven deceased six were women. Of those killed by terrorists, five were from Gujarat and two from neighbouring Maharashtra. Usha Sonkar and Nirmala Sonkar were from Maharashtra and other five including Hasuben Patel, Surekha Patel, laxmiben Patel, Champaben Prajapati and Ratilal Patel were from South Gujarat and neighbouring Union Territory Daman. Of the 17 injured eight belong to Maharashtra and others from Gujarat, though all were travelling from the same bus which was attacked by radicals.
As the flight from Srinagar arrived, the volunteers made arrangements to send the bodies to their families as around 20 ambulances were already deployed outside Surat airport. Coordinator of the bus attacked by the terrorists, 24-year-old Harsh Desai too inured. Desai was the first person to come out from IAF plane. Security in and around the Surat airport enhanced to prevent any sort of panic as large number of people throng from the places across South Gujarat, Daman and Maharashtra from where the pilgrims belong.
‘’The injured pilgrims were shifted to hospitals in Surat. The State Government will take care of their expenses,’’ said Deputy CM Patel, adding that the Gujarat Government has activated helplines for information on Amarnath Yatra pilgrims. The 40-day long Amarnath pilgrimage started from June 29 and will end on August 7. Already 1.40 lakh pilgrims reached the cave shrine. large chunk of pilgrims are from Gujarat.
Meanwhile, protests were staged at various places across the State to condemn the incident of attack on innocent pilgrims. In Ahmedabad, Muslims from minority dominated Juhapura locality came out in protest, demanding strict action against Pakistan for supporting terror. They raised slogans against Pakistan and displayed placards expressing opposition to attack. The right wing organisations as Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal too took out protest marches in Rajkot, Jamnagar and Valsad in South Gujarat, against the attack, burning symbolic effigies of terrorists and raising slogans against Pakistan.
An Ahmedabad based tour operator Manish Sharma said that despite terrorist attack, Amarnath bound pilgrims from the city are willing to travel Jammu & Kashmir and there has been no cancellation for already booked tours. Grieving family members of the deceased assembled at the Surat airport demanded strict action against the terrorist. In fact some of them demanded military rule in the terror prone State to curb any such incidents in future.