By NNN-PTI
Srinagar : Non-Kashmiri labourers residing in Kashmir are fleeing the valley following a week-long ultimatum given to them by the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit to leave the place "honourably".
Blaming these labourers of spreading immoral activities in the valley, the outfit served them the notice last evening.
Bus stands in towns and villages are thronged by the labourers hailing from Bihar, Rajashtnan, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Haryana, Punjab and Nepal to catch the first available vehicles to leave the valley.
"We endorsed and support the statement of Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani regarding outsiders and ask them to leave Kashmir within a week for their own safety," Hizbul spokesman Junid-ul-Islam said in a statement here last evening.
Geelani had asked the non-Kashmiri labourers to leave the valley after the July 20 incident in which a girl was raped and murdered in Kupwara district.
According to rough estimates, nearly one lakh skilled and unskilled labourers from other parts of the country and Nepal are earning their livelihood here for the past several years.
Ramesh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and is carpenter by profession while leaving the valley said "everybody is looking towards us with an eye of suspicion and I don't want to live in such an environment.
"We are fearing a backlash after two non-locals were found involved in the rape and murder of a teenaged girl," he said.
More than two thousand non-locals have left Srinagar for Jammu since Saturday morning.
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