The security forces, in coordination with the Jammu and Kashmir Police, are planning a major crackdown on the people whom the authorities perceive as a major security threat in Jammu and Kashmir. Authorities describe  them as ‘over-ground workers’ (OGWs) and ‘unlisted terrorists’, insisting that they were generating more fear than the listed, armed terrorists hiding or dying in encounters with the security forces.

Seven back-to-back civilian killings in Kashmir in the last 6 days—as many as 6 in the Union Territory’s summer capital of Srinagar—have generated a fresh wave of terror, particularly among the minority Hindu and Sikh communities. Of the seven killings, four were executed, in pairs of two each, in just 40 hours and all the four terror victims are from the minority communities.

After killing the city’s famous pharmacy owner, Makhan Lal Bindroo, who was a resident Kashmiri Pandit, and a Golgappa vendor Virender Pawan of Bhagalpur Bihar, in two shootouts in Srinagar on Tuesday evening, unidentified terrorists in the forenoon on Thursday shot dead schoolteachers, Supinder Kaur and Deepak Chand, in the Iddgah area of Srinagar.

Supinder Kaur (46), a Sikh lady teacher was from Aloochibagh, Srinagar, while her colleague, Deepak Chand (39), was a scheduled caste recruit from Jammu’s Janipur area. Both were gunned down at Government Higher Secondary School Sangam, Iddgah, on the city’s northern outskirts. Doctors at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Soura, declared them ‘brought dead’. Supinder was the school principal.

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Some of the teachers revealed that four youths on two motorcycles drove into the school premises at around 11:00 am. They took out pistols, snatched away mobile phones from the staff and ordered all the teachers to assemble in two particular rooms. Thereafter, they checked the identity cards of all the teachers. Both the non-Muslim teachers were separated, taken out on the ground and fired upon. Others were let off and their phones were also returned. After the gunmen decamped on their motorcycles, the traumatised staff called the Police and rushed their colleagues to the hospital. However, both died before reaching the SKIMS.

Thursday’s twin assassinations, which came in just 40 hours of the target killings of Bindroo and Paswan, sent shockwaves across the Kashmir valley, particularly in the capital city of Srinagar, where the terrorists have carried out over a dozen of such fatal attacks this year. There has been a remarkable increase in such attacks after the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s belligerent address to the UN General Assembly on 24 September, 2021.

Director General of the Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbag Singh called the fresh killing spree as an “attempt to create an atmosphere of fear and to disrupt the communal brotherhood in Kashmir”. In a conversation with the mediapersons, he said that the killings were being executed by terrorists. “Srinagar police have got many clues and very soon we will expose the people who are targeting humanity, local ethos and brotherhood. This is definitely a conspiracy to target communal harmony and brotherhood”, the DGP asserted.

“This is a conspiracy to defame the Kashmiri Muslims. This is a conspiracy to target those who come from outside for livelihood. This is a conspiracy to target communal harmony,” the DGP said while responding to a question. He claimed that the killers were operating “on behalf of their Pakistani handlers”.

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“I strongly condemn the barbaric killing of two of our teachers, Supinder Kour and Deepak Chand by terrorists. A befitting reply will be given to the perpetrators of the heinous terror attacks on innocent people", Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha tweeted. “The terrorists & their patrons will not succeed in disturbing peace, progress & prosperity of J&K UT. My deepest condolences to the bereaved family, friends and colleagues' ', Sinha said about the killings that came on the first of the navrataras.

Senior leaders of almost all the mainstream political parties, including the former Chief Ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, Sajad Lone of Peoples Conference and Altaf Bukhari and Junaid Azeem Mattu, who is also Mayor of Srinagar, condemned the two teachers’ killing in their separate tweets and statements.

Interestingly an ISIS dark channel in the Middle East was noticed to have carried on its site, Amaq, a body-cam video, showing a pistol borne man following the bhelpuri vendor in Srinagar and pumping bullets into his skull. Its Arabic text claimed responsibility of Paswan’s murder. Previously, a spokesman of United Liberation Front had claimed responsibility of the two non-Muslim’s killing on behalf of The Resistance Front (TRF), which, according to Police, is a front for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Officials maintained that they were verifying both the claims.

Shortly after the two teachers’ killing, purportedly a TRF statement issued by its spokesman Ahmad Khalid that the duo had been shot dead by the outfit’s ‘Shaheed Gazi Squad’. It alleged that the two teachers had on 15 August harassed the students’ parents and warned them of dire consequences in case of being absent from the Indian Independence Day ceremony. The statement warned against giving ‘religious colour’ to the two killings. It warned that the people collaborating with the Indian authorities and the outsiders possessing domicile certificates would not be spared.

Senior Police officials said that Thursday’s fatal attacks on a Hindu teacher and a Sikh lady teacher carried clear indications of the assassins’ motive of generating a communal strife. They said that such kind of attacks on the minorities had been resumed by the terrorists after more than 18 years. “We have apprehensions of more such attacks ahead of the (Union) Home Minister Amit Shah’s first visit to Kashmir after August 2019, being scheduled in the fourth week of the current month”, a senior Police officer said.

“We are effectively dealing with the armed and listed terrorists. Since long, they are in no position to attack a hard target. But this time around, we would be striking on their active supporters, habourers and collaborators and others engaged as their influence managers. These are the real people who create a fear psychosis and who get the terrorists’ soft targets killed”, said a top ranking official.

LG Manoj Sinha told Rajat Sharma on India TV on Thursday that his government had a strategy to restore normalcy and the people's faith in the system of protecting every citizen's life and property. "We are effectively dealing with the terrorism but it has a larger ecosystem in place. We are committed to breaking that ecosystem. Give us a week's time and you will see a different situation in Kashmir", Sinha asserted.