SRINAGAR, India, 19 October 2005 — Gunmen yesterday killed Kashmir’s Minister of State for Education Ghulam Nabi Lone in Srinagar’s high-security Tulsibagh area which has the houses of many senior ministers, politicians and bureaucrats.
Police said two heavily armed men were apparently not checked properly at the entrance to the area as they were in police uniform. One of them forced his entry into the residence of Lone, firing indiscriminately at Lone who was speaking to a group of callers at the lawn of his official residence at the time.
His accomplice tried to enter the house of M.Y. Tarigami, state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “My guard fired at and killed the intruder while the other succeeded in entering the adjacent house of Mr. Lone,” Tarigami told Arab News.
Doctors at Srinagar’s Soura Medical Institute declared Lone dead on arrival.
In all five people, including Lone and one of the gunmen, died in the attack. Lone’s killer managed to escape. Another five people were injured in the attack.
The entire government residential complex in Tulsibagh is fortified with drop gates, bunkers and concertina wire rings to prevent intrusion. There are also paramilitary guards posted at each house inside the complex.
Lone was the third senior Indian official killed by insurgents since 2000, and each of the previous slayings led to major military clampdowns in Kashmir and ratcheted up tension between India and rival Pakistan, both of which claim all the Himalayan territory.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the slaying “dastardly” and said in a statement that “efforts to hamper the earthquake relief work and disturb peace in the state will be thwarted.”
