Civilian killings in Kashmir | A throwback to the 1990s

A spate of targeted killings in Kashmir has kept the minorities and migrant workers on edge. Peerzada Ashiq reports on how the attacks have once again disrupted the hard-earned goodwill between the majority and minority communities in the Valley

At Bohri Kadal, the spice market of Kashmir, the air was thick with the fragrance of spices. It was the second Monday of November. Just as the market closed for the day, unidentified armed militants, hiding in a dark alley, emerged around 8:10 p.m. They followed a local salesman and waited for him to open a parked car nearby. As Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, 45, climbed into the driver’s seat, the . Khan, a loyal salesman of Sandeep Mawa from north Kashmir’s Bandipora, died.

“Security agencies had told me during the day that militants might target me. I left the market around 3 p.m. in a different car. I had asked the salesman to get my car in the evening,” said Mawa, whose father Roshan Lal Mawa was shot four times in October 1990 but survived the attack. It was only in 2019, 29 years after his father was attacked, that Mawa decided to re-open the spice shop. He got a rousing reception by the Kashmiri Muslim traders on that day.