On the evening of 8 June 2020, a sarpanch of Lok Bhawan in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was killed by Islamist terrorists. The sarpanch, Ajay Pandita (Bharti), was associated with the Congress party, and belonged to the minority Kashmiri Hindu community in the Valley. The same community, known as Kashmiri Pandits, was first persecuted and then driven out of their homes by separatists and terrorists in 1990. The ethnic cleansing of Pandits was seen as having tacit, and often even explicit, support from many sections of the majority Muslim community in Kashmir.
The murdered sarpanch (and his family) have spent much of the year in Kashmir, in their native village, for over a decade now. They have been part and parcel of the social milieu since their voluntary return to Kashmir post-1990. In an interview to the local press, which has surfaced on social media, Bharti was seen lamenting the J&K administration’s lack of acknowledgment of the security concerns raised by him. This is perhaps the first killing of a Kashmiri Pandit after a long time – the last being the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits at Nadimarg village in Pulwama district on 23 March 2003.