India's powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held a flurry of high-level security meetings, including with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Indian Army chief, Gen Manoj Pande, as Jammu and Kashmir was rocked by a series of eight targeted killings of Hindu minorities by terrorists within a week. 

An attacker shot a Hindu bank manager in his office with a pistol in the Kulgam area on Thursday. He later died in the hospital. Hours later, two migrant labourers were shot by terrorists in central Kashmir valley as they were returning from a brick kiln where they worked.

On Tuesday, a Hindu woman schoolteacher was also shot dead by terrorists in the same area. Before that, terrorists shot and killed three off-duty policemen and a television actress, all Muslims, in three separate assassination-style attacks last week. Days before that, a Hindu government employee was shot dead inside his office by terrorists who police said belonged to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The killings in Kashmir have intensified calls by Kashmiri Pandits - who were sought to be rehabilitated in Kashmir by the government as it claimed that the place was returning to normal after decades of insurgency and bloodshed - to ensure their security. Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits, who are Hindus, protested in Srinagar and other parts of the union territory on Thursday. Many have started to leave the valley amid a lockdown in prefab shelters where they have been staying since a wave of attacks against the community in the nineties made them flee their homes in Kashmir Valley.

"The government has made us hostages. We are not being allowed to leave our homes. We are all scared. There is a security failure in Kashmir. " a member of the Kashmiri Pandit community in an SOS video posted online said.

Political parties in Jammu and Kashmir condemned the attack on migrant labourers, saying there was a "total breakdown of law and order" in the union territory, according to the Hindustan Times.

The Kashmir-centric National Conference party condemned the attack, saying that the "spate of killings" continues unabated and demonstrates the "utter failure" of the government to stem the violence, despite the heavy deployment of security forces.

"We express serious concern over a situation moving fast towards a crisis wherein no citizen can be considered safe," the party said.

(SAM)