A day after a policeman was killed outside his home in Soura area of Srinagar and his minor daughter injured, terrorists struck again, this time in Hushroo, Chadoora in Budgam district killing a young lady and injuring her nephew. Ambreen Bhat, a TV artist too was killed at her home. It is the same Chadoora where a Kashmir Pandit government employee Rahul Bhat was murdered a few weeks back. Though police in a rush claimed to have solved Bhat’s murder saying two Pakistani terrorists killed in an encounter in Bandipora were involved in the killing, the murder of woman artist indicates that the killers are very much in the area, roaming freely and killing at will. Such killings have now become a norm. Almost some unarmed person falls to the bullets of terrorists every day. The situation is grim and there is scare in the air that smells of death. Nobody feels secure and this sense of insecurity is what the government has to address on priority basis. It goes without saying that random killings are not easy to stop but what is mandatory is that police improves its investigative mechanism. Had Rahul Bhat’s killing been properly investigated, police may have identified the killers present in the area. It is responsibility of the police hierarchy to investigate each and every such killing professionally without being in the race of ‘solving cases in record time.’
That said, people of Kashmir too need to speak up. There are killers on prowl. They are killing with vengeance and sparing none. They are killing migrant workers, unarmed policemen, political activists, people from minority community, artists and all. While everyone expects police to identify and deal with the killers under the law of the land, the silence of the people here is what encourages these killers to kill at will. People need to speak up. They need to convey to these killers that ‘not in our name’. They need to realise that these killers are the ones who are here to destroy the Kashmir society. It is share madness and nobody can approve such crimes. If killing people for political and ideological differences becomes a norm then everyone would be hunting for everyone. The world will become a murderous field and no one will have any safety and security. Those who have killed Ambreen and injured her nephew are by no standard normal human beings. They are psychopaths, sadists and inhuman. The society has to wake up and raise its voice against the violence otherwise recall the poetic form of a 1946 post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)…
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
