BJP’s J&K president Ravinder Raina, other party leaders and dozens of BJYM workers visited the residences of the aggrieved families on Friday. “They were true nationalists. We will avenge their murders. Their blood will not go to waste,” Raina said.
In this year alone, at least nine BJP leaders or workers have been killed in militant attacks across Kashmir, most of them in South Kashmir. On 6 August, a BJP sarpanch, Sajad Ahmad Khanday, was killed in the same area of Kulgam. A day earlier, militants shot BJP sarpanch Arif Ahmad in the adjoining Akhran village but he survived.
“It is only when they are dead that these highly placed people with bulletproof cars think of visiting them,” said a neighbour outside the home of Haroon, who didn’t want to be identified.