There is a growing demand from the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kashmir to extend security to more leaders and workers as a spree of attacks on the party leaders left five dead in the past three months.
“In the past two years, 23 BJP leaders or workers were targetted by the militants and killed. We lost nine BJP leaders only in Kulgam district. It is high time police provided security and ensured workers’ safety. I appeal to the Director General of Police to provide both security and accommodations to our workers,” said Altaf Thakur, BJP spokesperson in Jammu and Kashmir.
The fresh demand comes just a day after a BJP leader, Javeed Ahmad Dar, who is a constituency in-charge, was killed in his house in Kulgam. Earlier, a grenade attack on a BJP leader’s house in Rajouri and indiscriminate firing inside the residence of BJP leader in Anantnag left three dead this month.
Twenty-three BJP leaders or functionaries have been attacked or killed by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir over the past two years, the party said on Wednesday, a day after Dar was shot dead in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district; Dar was the party’s constituency in-charge for Kulgam.
Meanwhile, the police on Tuesday claimed that Dar was not listed as a BJP leader with the police and neither the party came forward for any security cover.
However, Abid Hussian Khan, the party’s district president in Kulgam, refuted the police version. “We condemn the police statement. The police did not act on our plea to provide security,” Mr. Khan said.
