By Aiswarya Raj
On Wednesday – a day after some assailants at Baisaran meadow in Pahalgam shot dead some 26 civilians, mostly tourists – a 20-year-old Kashmiri student at Baba Farid Institute of Technology stepped out of his Dehradun campus as usual when some locals heckled him. What shocked him most, he says, were these were people who knew him from the time he joined the college two years ago.
“The locals insinuated that we (I and some fellow Kashmiri students) would be in danger if we stayed here,” he says. A little later, a video of Hindu Raksha Dal with an ultimatum convinced the students to leave.
In the video, Lalit Sharma, a Hindu Raksha Dal leader, is heard saying: “The incident in Pahalgam has hurt us… If we see any Kashmiri Muslim in the state after 10 am tomorrow, we will give them the right treatment. Tomorrow, all our workers will leave their homes to give this treatment to Kashmiri Muslims. We won’t wait for the government to take action… Kashmiri Muslims, leave by 10 am, else you will face action you can’t imagine.”
Nasir Khuehami of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association claimed that right-wing outfits from the state have been issuing threats asking Kashmiri Muslims to leave by 10 am. According to JKSA, there are over 2,000 Kashmiri students in Uttarakhand.
“Several rushed from their institutions to the airport. We have spoken to the Governor of the state and the police. We are in contact with the students to check on the situation,” he said.
The heckling and the threats have made five Kashmiri students – including the 20-year-old — leave their BFIT campus at 2 am and have been waiting at the Jolly Grant airport since then.
“At night, we booked a flight. We were scared of staying in the area, so we left for the airport soon after,” he says.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
