Content area
Full Text
The recent killing of a non-Kashmiri trader by militant groups has drawn focus to the tensions related to the new land and residency laws implemented by New Delhi in the disputed region.
It seemed like any other cold December evening at the sleepy market of Sarai Bala in Jammu and Kashmir's capital, Srinagar, when Satpal Nischal was killed by militants. Most of the shopkeepers had returned home and the crowds were beginning to thin out.
A young man then suddenly burst into a jewelry shop and brandished a handgun, aiming at Nischal. "I was horrified," said Aijaz Ahmad, who has run a jewelry shop right across Nischal's store for 20 years. "It's always been peaceful here until the shooting, the gunman shot and ran off. We all hid behind our desks," Ahmad said.
"We don't know the reason why it happened. We don't have animosity with anyone. No one ever harassed us here in 50 years, not even militants," his son Rakesh Nischal told DW. "His death has left deep emotional scars. I felt rage and anger, and so many emotions that I did not know what to do," he added.
Nischal, a 70-year-old goldsmith from the Indian state of Punjab, had lived in Kashmir for almost 50 years.
A few weeks before he was killed, Nischal had obtained a certificate under the new domicile law that allows people who have lived in Jammu and Kashmir for more than 15 years the right to acquire immovable property.
The new land laws were introduced in October 2020 by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and they caused consternation among locals.
Nischal now became the first victim of a campaign by a recently setup militant group, The Resistance Front (TRF), to kill every non-Kashmiri resident...