[Reader-list] Muzamil Jaleel - Midnight massacre pushes Valley to brink

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Indian Express, March 25, 2003

Midnight massacre pushes Valley to brink
24 Kashmiri Pandits shot outside a police outpost

Muzamil Jaleel

Nadimarg (pulwama), March 24: To the milestones in the Valley's 
blood-drenched road, add one more: Nadimarg. Exactly three years and 
four days after the Chittisinghpora massacre, terror sneaked in at 
midnight again in this remote village in south Kashmir, dragged out 
the sleeping minority Hindus, 11 men, 11 women and two infants and 
sprayed them with bullets.

The massacre, coming a day after the killing of moderate Hizbul 
leader Majid Dar, has not only shattered the three-month-old calm 
since the Mufti government took charge, it also threatens to push the 
Valley once again to its familiar brink.

So gruesome was this killing that even in a place where trauma and 
tragedy have become cliches, everyone, from the media to the 
administration, was searching for adjectives. Consider this:

* Suraj had gone to sleep after celebrating his third birthday. His 
mother, among those who was asked to come out and fall in line, tried 
to hide him behind her. The first bullet got the mother, the second 
his father, then another crushed Suraj's right toe, shearing off 
three fingers. One and a half hours later, he died crying.

* Monu was just 2-year-old. The bullets had made sieve of his chest. 
His three-month old brother is the only survivor in the family. His 
parents too were killed next to him.

* Pritima, a 23-year-old woman who could not walk because of a 
disability, was dragged out and shot dead.

* Mohan Lal Bhat, 19, spent the day today looking at his father, 
mother, sister and uncle, all covered in white, their names scrawled 
in blue ink on the cotton.

A Muslim woman offering water to the family member of a Kashmiri 
Pandit killed on Monday. Javeed Shah
* The first two bullets hit Chunni Lal in his thigh and arm. He fell 
down and found himself in a pile of bodies. As the guns fell silent, 
the gunmen came to check for any living. In a pool of blood, he held 
his breath, feigned dead and thus survived to tell the story.

* Phoola Devi (60) slipped away from the line and hid herself in the 
bushes just metres from the massacre site. Gripped with fear, she had 
to watch her husband Bansilal and 22-year-old daughter Rajni die 
crying for help.

The irony is that this Kashmiri Hindu hamlet had a police picket too 
and the massacre took place right in its compound. Out of the nine 
policemen supposed to guard the Hindus, three were absent while the 
other six were sleeping. In fact, the unidentified killers had first 
barged into their picket, collected their guns and kept them locked 
inside till half of the residents were done to death.

''I was about to go to sleep when there was a knock at the door. My 
mother opened the door and there were three men wearing army uniforms 
(olive green), helmets and bullet-proof vests. Two of them were 
bearded and they asked everybody to come out,'' said Mohan Lal Bhat, 
whose entire family was wiped out in the massacre. ''One of them 
spoke in Kashmiri which roused suspicion and when my father tried to 
resist, they dragged him out. Then they dragged out my mother, sister 
and uncle. I heard the commotion on the door and hid behind a tin 
sheet upstairs,'' he said. Within 15 minutes, Bhat said, he heard the 
gun shots and wails. ''I spent the entire night there in shock and 
disbelief''.

Eyewitnesses revealed that a group of 12 men armed with AK rifles and 
attired in olive green uniforms, bullet-proof vests and helmets, 
swooped on this remote village, 80 km south of Srinagar, at around 
9.45 last night.

''They told us that they were armymen and had to search the houses. 
They asked everybody to come out,'' said Phoola Devi. ''I came out 
with my husband and daughter. But when they asked us to line up in 
front of the police picket, I slipped away towards the bushes. Within 
seconds, they started firing indiscriminately,'' she said. ''And when 
they (the gunmen) left the village, I looked for my family. My 
husband and daughter were lying dead but my son Chandji had also 
escaped. He had hidden inside the house.''

In Chittisinghpra, a group of unidentified gunmen had swooped on a 
Sikh village, lined up 36 men and shot them dead on March, 20, 2000. 
There was no change in the modus operandi - the only difference is 
that this time around, the killers did not even spare the women and 
children.

The village was full of people as the entire Muslim neighbourhood had 
come to join the mourning. There was also a beeline of politicians 
from government to the separatist parties. The first to arrive was 
the Pradesh Congress chief Ghulam Nabi Azad who put the blame 
squarely on Pakistan and promised strengthening of security to the 
Kashmiri Pandits still living in the Valley.

''The security provided to the 9,000-odd Kashmiri Hindus who had not 
migrated in 1990 should be the priority of the government,'' he said. 
Senior Hurriyat Conference leader and JKLF chief Yasin Malik had also 
come along with another separatist leader Nayeem Khan.

''It is a shameful act against humanity. It is brutality and nobody 
can accept such a heineous crime,'' he said. '

'We want an impartial probe into this heineous massacre and the 
Hurriyat Conference will fully co-operate,'' he said. He said that 
the problem of Kashmiri Pandits has nothing to do with Kashmir 
dispute. ''They are an essential part of Kashmir. This tragedy is a 
human issue and has nothing to do with any politics''.

Another senior separatist leader Shabir Shah arrived in the afternoon 
as the police and local administration were waiting for Chief 
minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

He immediately took over and soon the villagers -both Hindu and 
Muslim - started shouting slogans of unity and against the 
unidentified killers. There was a lot of commotion in the crowd when 
Mufti arrived along with his daughter Mehbooba and senior ministers 
of his administration. Mufti called the massacre a ''major setback to 
the peace process.''

As the bodies were being taken for the funeral, an old man was 
bitterly crying on the verandah of his house. ''I have not just lost 
my family. I feel my roots have ditched me. I will never belong to 
Kashmir again,'' he said.