Militants killed a Kashmiri Pandit who worked as a bank security guard in Pulwama district on Sunday, prompting a Pandit organisation to pour scorn on the government for its failure to protect the community and claims of normality in the Valley.

Sanjay Sharma, 40, was shot around 10.30am on a street in hometown Achan while being accompanied by his wife, a police officer said. The incident comes after a four-month lull in fatal attacks on Kashmiri Pandits.

“#Shame on (lieutenant governor) Manoj Sinha,” the Kashmir Pandit Sangarsh Samiti, a group representing resident Pandits, tweeted.

“Yet another Non-Migrant Kashmiri pandit (who) was working as guard at ATM(killed). Near his residence atAchan Pulwama. Survived by his wife and two children. He was brother of Bhushan Lal Sharma, the priest of Kashmiri pandits.”

The group taunted the central government for being unable to control “75 lakh Kashmiris” while aspiring to control “PoK and Baluchistan”.

It accused the government of censoring information that proved that “Kashmir is(the) most dangerous place for Kashmiri Pandits in this world”.

Thousands of Pandit government employees have fled the Valley and are agitating for relocation to Jammu since the killing of a colleague, Rahul Bhat, in May last year.

The government has rebuffed their demand and withheld the salaries of those refusing to join work in the Valley. The protesters claim the government is turning them into sacrificial lambs to hard-sell its “all is well” Valley narrative.

The Sangharsh Samiti shared a screenshot of a statement by a purported militant group, Kashmir Freedom Fighters, that claimed responsibility for the killing.

Several top militant groups use frontal organisations to carry out attacks in the Valley. Local Muslims condemned the killing and said it was a blot on “Kashmiriyat”, or Kashmir’s composite culture. The police said an armed guard had been posted in the village for the security of minority (Hindu) homes, and an investigation was on to ascertain how the killing took place.

“Terrorists fired upon one civilian from a minority namely Sanjay Sharma S/O Kashinath Sharma R/O Achan Pulwama while on way to local market,” the Kashmir zone police tweeted.

Two days ago, militants had shot and injured Asif Ali Ganai, son of a police head constable who had been killed by insurgents last year in Anantnag.

Sunday’s killing comes days after the KashmirFight blogspot, purportedly backed by militants, threatened organisers of the Global Kashmiri Pandit Conclave, held this weekend in Delhi. Kashmir Files director Vivek Agnihotri and actor Anupam Kher have been among the participants.

Militant attacks on Pandits and other Hindus, along with non-local workers, have picked up in the Valley since the 2019 scrapping of the special status of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state.

The attacks have spread also to Jammu where militants killed seven and injured several members of the Brahmin community in Dhangri village, Rajouri, last month.

The government insists that the situation has improved vastly in the region since the constitutional changes of 2019.