By Jehangir Ali
Srinagar: Trouble started for Sanan Khursheed on April 23 when he routinely boarded an auto rickshaw on the outskirts of Mohali in Punjab to go to his college where he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
The 20-year-old student at Rayat-Bahra University in Mohali recalled that his friends tried to persuade him to skip the college as the attack in Pahalgam a day earlier had sparked a wave of anger and protests across the country.
“Our exams are coming up. I thought we were safe in Punjab,” he said.
A group of young male and female students purportedly from Haryana and Himachal Pradesh initially cast unfriendly gazes at Khursheed who was the only Kashmiri in the rickshaw.
Then, they started communal rants about Kashmir which pulled the young student from Srinagar into the verbal duel. “They called me a terrorist and even abused my sister and mother,” Khursheed said.
He added, “When I reached, everyone at the college was looking at me with suspicion. Very few people spoke to me. On the next day, videos of student assaults started doing rounds on social media. One of my friends was also beaten up”.
Khursheed is among a group of 45 male and female students who returned from Punjab to their homes in Kashmir on Monday (April 28), six days after the Pahalgam terror attack sent shockwaves across the country.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
