On the evening of July 31, 2026, gunmen walked into a brick kiln in the Kelam area of Kulgam, in south Kashmir, and shot two migrant labourers in cold blood. Deepak Rattray, 24, and Bhupinder, 28, both from Chhattisgarh, had travelled hundreds of miles from home to earn a living moulding bricks. Rattray died on the spot. Bhupinder, critically wounded, was rushed first to GMC Anantnag and then referred to SKIMS Soura in Srinagar, where he succumbed to his injuries the following day. Neither man was a combatant, a soldier, or a symbol of any state. They were labourers, and that alone was reason enough for their killers to end their lives.

The Resistance Front, widely understood to be a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The choice of target is not incidental. It is the latest instance of a familiar and cynical pattern in Kashmir’s long conflict: when militants find it difficult to strike the state directly, they turn their guns on the most vulnerable and least protected people in the Valley — non-local workers who come each season to build homes, lay roads, and fire kilns that the region’s own economy depends on. It is the first targeted attack of its kind on migrant labour in nearly two years, and it has understandably revived fear among the thousands of seasonal workers who make this journey every year.

The condemnation has been swift and, notably, cut across the political and religious spectrum. Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha called it a “cowardly terror attack on civilians.” Chief Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the killings and announced an ex-gratia payment of ₹10 lakh to each victim’s family, with the district administration adding a further ₹6 lakh in immediate assistance. PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti described the attack as “unimaginably cruel.” Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge demanded the harshest punishment for the perpetrators. CPI(M) leader and Kulgam MLA M.Y. Tarigami called it a barbaric act. Kashmir’s chief preacher, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, added his voice too, insisting that violence must be shunned. That such uniform condemnation exists across parties that agree on almost nothing else in Kashmir’s politics says something important: there is no constituency, anywhere, for the murder of unarmed workers.

But condemnation, however unanimous, is not protection. It is a response after the fact, not a safeguard before it. J&K Police, the Army, and the CRPF sealed the area and launched a joint search operation within hours, and the Lieutenant Governor has directed security forces to intensify operations against those responsible. These are necessary steps, but they are reactive. What Kulgam has exposed, once again, is a gap in ongoing, everyday security at the sites where migrant workers actually live and labour — brick kilns, construction camps, orchards, and roadside dhabas scattered across rural Kashmir, often far from the nearest checkpoint or police post.

The government’s directive that employers register non-local workers with local police and district authorities and ensure they carry insurance is a reasonable start, but a start is not enough. What is needed now is a sustained, visible security architecture around every worksite that employs outside labour: regular patrolling and area domination near brick kilns and labour camps, particularly after dusk when today’s attack occurred; a functioning, fast-response mechanism that workers themselves can access if they sense danger; and coordination between the police, district administration, and employers so that registration is not a paperwork formality but the basis for actual protection. Kashmir cannot keep asking outside labour to build its houses and fire its kilns while offering them no shield against the men who would murder them for showing up to work.

This is not, in the end, a question of “locals” versus “non-locals.” It is a question of what any government owes anyone living or working within its borders. Every inhabitant of Jammu and Kashmir, whether born there or arrived last season for a wage, is entitled to walk to work without wondering if it is the last walk they will take. The state owes Deepak Rattray’s and Bhupinder’s families more than compensation cheques, however necessary those are. It owes every worker still standing at every kiln, farm, and construction site in the Valley the concrete, unglamorous security measures that would let them finish the season and go home alive.