Kashmiris face fresh wave of suspicion & harassment after Red Fort blast

Kashmiris face fresh wave of suspicion and harassment after Red Fort blast

The deadly Red Fort blast that claimed 15 lives has triggered shock across the country but for Kashmiris living outside the Valley, it has unleashed something deeper and familiar. They are again the target of suspicion, eviction threats and everyday hostility, turning routine spaces into zones of fear.

Days after a blast near Red Fort in Delhi claimed at least 15 lives,  Kashmiris living in the national capital and other cities across India once again find themselves thrust into a climate of suspicion and unease.

Since the blast, many Kashmiris living outside the valley have encountered eviction pressures, aggressive verification drives, intensified police checks, and sudden hostility from neighbours, shopkeepers, hotel staff, and even co-workers, turning routine spaces like metros, markets, and workplaces into charged, often uncomfortable, environments.

Rumaisa Sultan, a 29-year-old marketing analyst working at an MNC in Noida, in the National Capital Region has lived in Sarita Vihar, South Delhi, for the past two years. On any normal evening, she would stroll to the local grocery shop, exchange warm smiles with the shopkeeper who used to call her “didi,” and pick up vegetables or basic staples for dinner.

But that was before November 10. After the blast involving a car near Gate No. 1 of the Red Fort Metro Station, Sultan finds that the shockwaves of the blast have hit her daily life and destroyed the routines that she had come to take for granted.

For her, the trauma has not only been about the terror of that night it is the cascade of fear, suspicion, and alienation that followed.

“When I walk into the shop now, I can literally feel people’s faces changing. The same shopkeeper who used to smile at me and say, ‘didi, kya chahiye?’ (Sister, what would you like?) has refused to give me anything. He just looks away and says, ‘Yahan se mat lo kahin aur se le lo.’ (Please don’t buy from here, go elsewhere for your purchases). It felt like he was telling me I didn’t belong there anymore. I felt humiliated… like I was being boycotted,” Sultan tells Media India Group.

Sultan cannot shake the feeling that everyone around her knows she is Kashmiri and that knowledge now carries a weight she never felt before. She has begun to consider relocating, not because of any direct threat, but because the constant stares, the hushed conversations, the subtle distancing, and now the open refusal at a shop she had been visiting every day, have become emotionally exhausting.

Also Read: Kashmiris call out Modi for his disconnect from people

Activists raise alarm

Sultan is not the only Kashmiri living in Delhi who has felt the sudden freeze in the attitude of neighbours and acquaintances. Just days after the blast, the Jammu & Kashmir Students Association (JKSA) held a press conference, warning that a dangerous wave of “collective suspicion” had begun to envelope Kashmiri students and residents in Delhi and other cities.

Nasir Khuehami, the national convenor of JKSA, said the aftermath had quickly spiralled into profiling, hostility, and a surge in intimidating questioning. What concerns him most, he said, is how ordinary Kashmiris  students, professionals, and even short-term visitors are suddenly being viewed through a lens of guilt.

“Since the night of the blast, we have received dozens of distress calls. Students are telling us that landlords are knocking on their doors at midnight, asking them to leave ‘for safety reasons.’ Some are being questioned about their identity and visitors to their homes. It is terrifying for them they feel like suspects in their own homes,” Khuehami tells Media India Group.

He adds that several Kashmiri tenants have been threatened with eviction, accused of being “sympathetic” to the attackers or “connected” in some indirect way accusations with no basis, but enough to push many to pack their bags overnight.

“Many students have already left their accommodations because they simply do not feel safe anymore,” he says.

He urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and issue a public message urging people not to equate Kashmiris with terror.

The JKSA’s observations don’t stop at campuses. According to the association, discrimination is spreading beyond universities into neighbourhoods, workplaces, and even public transport.

Reports coming in paint a grim picture as Kashmiri residents in different states find themselves subjected to a fresh round of identity verification drives, aggressive policing, evictions, and hostile questioning.

The JKSA has cautioned students to limit unnecessary movement, avoid public gatherings, and report abusive behaviour. It has also set up a 24×7 rapid-response coordination team and helpline for Kashmiri students.

According to the association, several students say they are being made to feel like suspects in their own homes.

While protests and press conferences garner headlines, much of the vilification happens online. According to JKSA, social media platforms were flooded within hours of the blast with insinuations, rumours, and innuendo linking all Kashmiris to the terror act. WhatsApp groups turned into informal “investigation panels,” where some circulated unverified claims against Kashmiri youth.

The association warns that this atmosphere of suspicion is deeply dangerous. “Turning a whole community into suspects is both unjust and harmful,” said Khuehami.

The backlash is not just from student bodies. Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has also publicly warned against treating all Kashmiris as suspects. “Not all Kashmiri Muslims are radicalised. Why do we have to prove our nationality?” he said in an interview.

Nonetheless, the discrimination against Kashmiris has spread and Kashmiri Muslims are quietly relocating or grouping together. A recent report by a media organisation says that many are moving into Muslim-majority or ghettoised areas for safety, avoiding public spaces, and minimising exposure.

At metro stations, some Kashmiris say they are now receiving hostile looks, even verbal abuse small moments that compound into pervasive unease.

Saqib Bashir, 27, a Kashmiri civil-service aspirant living in Chattarpur, says the atmosphere around him has shifted sharply in the days after the blast.

“Earlier people hardly noticed me I was just another student carrying books. But now, the moment they hear my accent or see me, I can feel the mood change. The stares are sharper, longer like they are trying to place me somewhere dangerous in their heads,” Bashir tells Media India Group.

He recounts one incident at the Chattarpur Metro Station that left him shaken “Two men standing behind me started whispering loudly on purpose. They said, ‘He looks Kashmiri wonder how people like him even come here. Who allows them? They should just go to Pakistan.’ And then they started abusing me  loud enough so I couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear it. I didn’t say a word. I just tried to ignore them and walked away,” he adds. He now avoids peak hours.

Waqas Khan, 32, who has come to Delhi for work, says that the situation, is no different for short-term visitors from Kashmir as suspicion follows them just as quickly.

Khan says he was suddenly asked to leave the hotel he had been staying in after the staff learned he was Kashmiri.

“The staff didn’t shout or threaten me they said it politely, almost apologetically. They told me, Sir, you should leave things are not good right now. But polite or not, the message was the same, that I wasn’t welcome,” Khan tells Media India Group.

Confused and shaken, Khan packed his bags and stepped out into the night with nowhere to go.

“I stayed at the airport for hours. I didn’t know what else to do. I booked the earliest ticket I could. I felt like I was being punished for something I did not do,” he adds.

So he returned to Kashmir, back in a place he had left in search of opportunity, but now the only refuge from prejudice elsewhere.

For many Kashmiris in Delhi, life was already a delicate balancing act. Their roots in the Valley, their ambition in the capital and now, after the blast, their identity feels weaponised against them.

Sultan, who works in a private firm, says she sometimes hesitates to speak Kashmiri in public. “I don’t want to draw attention. But I don’t want to hide who I am either,” she adds.

Others tell of job interviews where, despite strong credentials, they sense a shift in tone or hesitation the moment they mention their Kashmiri origin. One young Kashmiri woman (requesting anonymity) said she was rejected after reaching the final stage of an interview not for lack of skill, she believes, but because of who she was.

“One moment, everything was going smoothly. The panel was warm, they appreciated my portfolio, and they told me I was a strong fit. But the moment I mentioned I am from Kashmir, their expressions shifted. They didn’t say anything outright, but you can feel it when a room suddenly goes cold. Two days later, I got a rejection email with no explanation. Maybe it is a coincidence but in my heart, I know it wasn’t my skills they doubted. It was my identity,” she tells Media India Group.

This was not the first job she was close to bagging, and then lost for reasons she believes have nothing to do with her merit or experience. After the Pahalgam incident, she says she resigned from a well-paying position because the office atmosphere suddenly became uncomfortable for her as a Kashmiri.

“There were whispers, side-glances, and unnecessary comments about ‘people from her region.’ Nothing direct enough to complain about, but enough to make you feel watched. Every day it felt like I had to prove I wasn’t what they imagined,” she adds.

Since then, she has appeared for multiple interviews across Delhi  companies where her qualifications matched perfectly but the response, she says, has been consistently discouraging. Some never called back despite promising rounds; others seemed warm until the moment her Kashmiri identity surfaced.

She had hoped the next workplace would be different that talent and experience would matter more than identity. But the pattern, she says, keeps repeating.

“It breaks you a little. You work hard, you show up, you do everything right but the moment they hear ‘Kashmir,’ something shuts down. Not in you  in them,” she adds.

The scale of investigative scrutiny in the aftermath of the blast has only deepened the sense of siege. In Faridabad alone, police has questioned more than 2,000 Kashmiri students and tenants  not for any direct link to the explosion, but just under the sweeping suspicion of the alleged “white-collar terror module.”

For many, this signals a troubling shift from targetted intelligence work to broad, indiscriminate interrogation of an entire community. Even educational institutions have not been immune to this pattern. At Delhi University, several colleges reportedly asked only Kashmiri students to submit detailed personal information including home addresses, email IDs, and course details under the stated pretext of “safety.”

According to the Jammu & Kashmir Students Association, such measures amount to discrimination, targetted surveillance, reinforcing the feeling that Kashmiri identity itself is being criminalised. As Kashmiris across the capital retreat into silence, caution, or relocation, one truth hangs heavy, after every crisis, suspicion rises faster than facts, and the burden is carried by those with the least to do with the violence.