SRINAGAR: Tuesday, May 31, was supposed to be the last day of Rajni Bala’s tenure at the state-run High School at Gopalpora (Kulgam). The school management had received her transfer orders only 12 hours back. However, the day she was expected to bid adieu to her colleagues and students turned out to be the last day of her life.

Rajni Bala, a 36-year-old schoolteacher resident of Samba district was shot dead at Gopalpora, Kulgam on May 31, 2022

Raj Kumar, her husband, also a teacher and posted at Mirhama, had dropped her near the school and left for his duty. He might not have reached Mirhama when Rajni was killed. Kumar was also supposed to move out of Mirhama.

Kumar told reporters in Jammu that he had approached the chief education officer (CEO) seeking her transfer to “a safer place” after a Hindu was killed in Kakran, not far away from Gopalpur. It took 12 days for the administration within the district to issue the transfer orders. The couple had met the Director of Education on Monday, May 30, requesting him to deploy both of them to one school. The orders were issued the same night.

Operating from rented accommodation in Chowalgam near Kulgam for the last 14 years, Bala and Kumar have been serving the education department in Kulgam since 2009. Bala was appointed in the education department in 2011. The couple had a 13-year old daughter, Sana Attri, who was studying in a local private school.

They were basically from Nanak Chak village in Samba. Her last rites were carried were on June 1, 2022. The entire district administration had reached the family in Samba to pay their condolences. A group of people had also protest and attempted to block the national highway on Tuesday, reports appearing in the media said.

Meanwhile, the officials have started an exercise to identify and transfer the Hindu staffers to safer places within the education department. There are more than three thousand non-Muslim comprising resident Kashmiri Pandits, migrant Pandits employed under a scheme and people from various Jammu areas. “Most of them are already working in safe places and whoever is in vulnerable areas are being shifted,” one lower-rung official in the education department said.

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