6 Indian paramilitary soldiers die in Kashmir accident

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) – Six Indian paramilitary soldiers died and several others were injured in a road accident in Indian-occupied Kashmir on Tuesday.

The bus in which the soldiers were traveling veered off the road and rolled down a slope into a gorge near Chandanwari in Anantnag district, more than 110 kilometers (approximately 68 miles) from the capital of the occupied territory, Srinagar.

A police statement said the injured were airlifted to the Indian army’s main hospital in Srinagar for treatment.

The victims were members of the Indo Tibetan Border Force, a border paramilitary force deployed for security reasons along the route of a mountainous Hindu cave shrine, the site of an annual pilgrimage that was canceled ahead of schedule citing ‘bad weather.’

Meanwhile, a man, identified as Sunil Kumar, was fatally shot, while his brother Pintu Kumar was injured in the southern Shopian district.

The police said the area has been cordoned off to locate the attackers.

Since the Hindu nationalist Indian government scrapped the autonomous status of this disputed Muslim-majority region on August 5 2019 and imposed unprecedented restrictions, there has been a lot of repressed anger among the residents living under brutal occupation. The sentiment has often boiled over into attacks by unknown assailants targeting Hindus and non-Kashmiri Muslims in the region. It is widely believed that the Indian government wishes to meddle with the demographics of the occupied region in order to reduce the Muslim majority character of Kashmir by settling outsiders.

Jammu and Kashmir is currently ruled directly by New Delhi through Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who said the attack on the Kumar brothers “deserves strongest condemnation from everyone.”

He said the “militants responsible for the barbaric act will not be spared.”

According to many Kashmiris as well as independent rights organizations, repressive measures and restrictions by India against Kashmiri Muslims have substantially increased since the scrapping of Indian occupied Kashmir’s special status by the Hindu nationalist Modi regime.