A 36-year-old Kashmiri Pandit teacher named Rajni Bala was shot and killed by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district, sparking a wave of outrage by the Hindu community living in the valley. The KP community in J&K protested against the killing and demanded protection for them.
The Kashmiri Pandit community in Jammu was left shattered and angered by the targeted killing of the Hindu teacher and said that the government has “failed to protect them” against such heinous crimes. The group protested and conducted rallies in parts of the union territories, raising slogans against Pakistan and the government.
Bala was shot in the head on the premises of the school in Kulgam's Gopalpora area and succumbed to her injuries at a hospital, police said.
The killing of Bala, who belonged to the Samba district but was posted at a government school in Kulgam, is the second such killing of a Hindu employee in the district and the seventh targeted killing by terrorists in Kashmir in May.
Who was Rajni Bala?
Rajni Bala was a Hindu schoolteacher who belonged to the Samba district of Jammu and Kashmir but was posted in a government school in Kulgam. She was married to Raj Kumar, who is also a government teacher hailing from Samba.
Bala and her husband had been transferred to another school on Monday night, just a day before her killing. May 31 was supposed to be her last day in her previous school, where she was shot in the head by terrorists in a targeted attack.
Bala and Kumar had been living in a rented house in Kulgam for the past 14 years and had a 13-year-old daughter together. The Kashmiri Pandit family had been living in fear of the targeted killings in Kulgam and had been requesting the authorities to transfer them to another district.
While speaking to reports, Bala’s distraught husband said, “Had the administration transferred her to a safer place earlier, she might have been alive by now. I curse my destiny. Just a day after her transfer, she was killed by terrorists.”
(With PTI inputs)
READ | ‘Cowardly act, total failure to protect us’: Kashmiri Pandits stage protest over killing of Hindu teacher
