Militants shot dead a minority Hindu teacher during the morning assembly at a south Kashmir school on Tuesday in front of petrified students, some of whom fainted.

Rajni Bala, 36, was gunned down on her last day at the school from where she had been transferred to a relatively safer area in the face of increased attacks on migrants.

The latest in a series of killings of migrant employees in the Valley has called into question the Centre’s execution of the rehabilitation policy and prompted protesting Pandits to again accuse the government of using migrants as cannon fodder and scapegoats for political gains.

The Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), which represents non-migrant Pandits, was blunt. “Honorable prime minister of India is doing a road show in Shimla today to completing 8 years in power. Integral part of India (Kashmir) is bleeding and UT AND GOI (Union Territory and Government of India) is promoting tourism in Kashmir,” the KPSS tweeted.

The government has filled 5,928 of the 6,000 posts set aside for Pandit migrants in Kashmir under the rehabilitation package. No more than 1,037 of them have been given secure accommodation or allowed to stay in transit camps while the rest live in rented quarters outside the secure zones.

Rajni belonged to a Scheduled Caste and was teaching at a school in Gopalpora village of Kulgam district in south Kashmir. Her husband Raj Kumar teaches in another school. They were recently transferred on safety concerns.

Originally from Jammu’s Samba, the couple had been working in Kashmir for over a decade. Unlike migrant Pandit employees, who are being gradually rehabilitated in the Valley after the exodus in 1990, scores of employees from Scheduled Caste communities from Jammu are posted in Kashmir as part of a reservation policy.

An official said Rajni’s name had been cleared for transfer to another educational institution as part of a drive to post migrant employees in safer zones following the killing of a Pandit employee of the Jammu and Kashmir government on May 12 by militants.

On Tuesday, police said, two militants barged into the school as students and teachers were participating in the assembly session. Rajni was shot in the head from close range, triggering panic among those gathered. Videos showed some students fainting.

Pandit groups shared purported messages from militant outfits vowing to target them.

“Anyone becoming part of this settlers colonial programme (of colonial fascist regime) is in itself considered an occupier. JK is not a disputed land but illegally occupied by a brutal, hypocrite, colonial fascist mercenaries,” read a purported post by the banned Kashmir Fight blogspot that was shared by the KPSS. The post’s authenticity could not be independently established. The government says the blogspot is run by militants.

Rajni is the seventh victim of targeted killings by militants in Kashmir this month. Three of those slain were Hindu — two Jammu Dogras and one Kashmiri Pandit — while the four others — three off-duty policemen and TV artiste Ambreen Bhat — were Muslim.

Migrant Pandit employees, who have got jobs in the Valley under a Prime Minister’s rehabilitation package introduced a decade ago, have been up in arms against the government since May 12 after militants killed Pandit employee Rahul Bhat at his office in the Chadoora area of Budgam.

The employees claim that the government is using them as “scapegoats” and “cannon fodder” to prove that its return-and-rehabilitation plan for Pandits is succeeding. Pandit staff have been boycotting work for the past 19 days, seeking relocation to Jammu.

The agitating employees held multiple protests on Tuesday and again threatened a “mass migration” if their demand of relocation was not met within 24 hours. They also blocked the national highway at the Indra Nagar locality in Srinagar.

Slogans like “Bali ka bakra nahi chalega nahi chalega” (We will not allow them to make scapegoats out of us) and “Only solution — Relocation” were raised along with anti-government chants.

Amit Koul, a government employee and KPSS member, told reporters during a protest at Indra Nagar that the government was turning a blind eye to their plea to shift them to Jammu.

“The teacher was killed during an assembly session. It is very disturbing. We have been crying that we are not safe here and that please save us. We have decided that if the government takes no decision (on relocation), there will be another mass migration,” Koul said.

“The IGP (inspector-general of police) told us that within two to three years, they would free this place of terrorism,” he said, adding that the Pandits be kept in Jammu till such time.

A woman employee said the militants were not sparing women and children. “Security personnel themselves get killed. Nobody is safe here,” she said.