KASHMIR: Kashmiri militants attacked a state minister yesterday, killing one of her bodyguards and injuring another, 24 hours before state assembly polls open in northern India's war-torn principality amid massive security.
Muslim separatists have called for a statewide poll boycott and threatened to kill anyone participating in elections that India's federal government hopes can ease Kashmir's 13-year old insurgency that has claimed over 35,000 lives.
Police said tourism minister Ms Sakina Itoo (31) escaped unhurt when one of the vehicles in her elaborate security detail drove over a landmine in Bahunalla in Anantnag district during electioneering, 40 miles south of the states summer capital Srinagar.
A federal police officer died on the spot in the firefight which followed while another was injured in the attack, which security officers said was launched ahead of today's first of four rounds of polling to scare off candidates and voters. Voting ends on October 8th.
Ms Itoo - a candidate for the ruling National Conference Party, which analysts estimate is likely to register a majority in the 87-seat assembly - also escaped a militant attack on her house last week in which four people were injured.
More than 305 people, including law minister Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, assassinated last week, have died in terrorist-related incidents across Kashmir since elections were announced last month, 25 of them political activists. The mounting violence has raised serious doubts over voter turnout for the 24 seats to be voted on today.
"If the security forces cannot protect ministers from militants, what hope do we have?" shopkeeper Mr Shabir Akhtar asked.
"We are sitting targets for the militants after the elections," stated Mr Shahamat Hussian, a senior medical student in Srinagar who has no intentions of voting.
Senior security officials hinted that the army be used to "nudge" voters to polling booths to ensure a "respectable" turnout in an election that is being monitored by diplomats from 28 countries and covered by foreign reporters.
It is also an election which the Hindu nationalist-led federal coalition hopes will legitimise its rule over Kashmir, a third of which is held by Pakistan that also claims the rest. India has not allowed foreign observers to witness the polls.
Chief election commissioner Mr J.M. Lyndogh assured Kashmiri voters on television that "adequate" security arrangements were in place to help them "freely and fearlessly" exercise their vote.
Officials said a "steel ring" of more than 160,000 police and paramilitary personnel had been deployed, with over 350,000 army soldiers standing by in case of trouble. All voting booths are armed encampments guarded by security forces personnel wearing bullet-proof jackets and where all movement is strictly controlled.
Candidates travel in bullet proof cars, protected by a phalanx of armed guards. They do not give advance notice of their movements, frequently change their schedule and only travel in areas cleared by military road-opening parties equipped with metal detectors to detect mines and long sticks to probe the foliage for hidden explosives.
Kashmiri voters, who have no such protection, are scared of going to the polls. Posters warning those who vote of dire consequences have sprung up across the state, while rumours that militants will strike areas where polling has been high have terrified people.
"We are squeezed between the security forces and the militants," a voter said in Baramullah, 40 miles north of Srinagar. "If we don't vote the security forces get us, and the militants if we do," he added.
Transport contractors have received letters from militant groups threatening violence if they loaned out taxis for election-related work.
"Beware we will take action against the traitors. You will be responsible for the loss you suffer," the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen, one of Kashmir's larger militant groups, declared in a letter to the Bandipore taxi union.
In Bandipore, militants dismembered the body of a National Conference Party worker last week and strung his head up on a pole in the small border town, as a deterrent to voters.
"Pakistan-backed militant groups will go to any lengths to sabotage the polls," Kashmir's inspector general of police said. He said the 14-party Unified Jihad Council based in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which is fuelling Kashmir's insurgency, had targeted the elections as a high voter turnout would undermine its campaign.
India blames Pakistan of "sponsoring" the terrorist movement by infiltrating militants into the disputed principality after arming and training them.
Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, who recently said all cross-border militant infiltration had stopped, publicly acknowledged that he would be thrown out of power, even eliminated, if he abandoned the struggle to "liberate" Kashmir.
Meanwhile, police claimed to have arrested nine militants belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit based in Muzaffarabad, including one of their "commanders".