Kashmiri Pandit govt employees prepare to leave valley en masse as targeted killings continue

Kashmiri Pandit government employees have been preparing to leave the valley amid a rise in targeted killings, several media reports said. The employees will leave the valley en masse on Friday, The Tribune reported. According to The Hindu, over 4,000 Pandit employees decided to relocate but the police barred them from leaving. “No Pandit employee was allowed to leave their locations by the police on Tuesday,” a Kashmiri Pandit living in Srinagar told the daily. Union Territory administration had put up barricades and locked gates to transit camps, NDTV reported. Many employees have already relocated to Jammu, the report added. The minority community has been protesting since terrorists shot dead Rahul Bhat inside a government office in Budgam last month. Their safety concerns only increased as the killings continued. Terrorists have also been targetting non-locals. A migrant labourer from Bihar was shot dead in Budgam hours after the killing of Vijay Kumar a bank employee who hailed from Rajasthan in Kulgam on Thursday. ‘Second Kashmiri Pandit exodus’ AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday launched a tirade against the NDA government at the Centre over the targeted killings in Kashmir, saying it has not learnt any lessons from the past. In a tweet, Owaisi said that a “second Kashmiri Pandit exodus is in progress” and that the “Central government is repeating the mistakes of 1989.” ‘No heavy rush’: Srinagar Airport Meanwhile, the Srinagar Airport authorities on Thursday denied Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s claim of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley. The authority’s clarification came after Rahul Gandhi in a tweet claimed that many innocent people are being killed in Jammu and Kashmir and a fresh exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has started in the Valley. The airport authorities also urged not to spread such rumours. “We strongly rebut this sensational rumour-mongering. We handle between 16 thousand to 18 thousand passengers everyday. Today also the number of passengers is average. There is no heavy rush of the minority community as rumoured by this tweet. Please do not spread rumours like this,” Srinagar Airport said in a tweet. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.