Separatists try to drive out last vestiges of minorities’ presence

KS Correspondent

SRINAGAR, Dec 24: In their drive to create Kashmir as an Islamic fundamentalist enclave, the separatists have stepped up the drive to push out the few remaining outposts of Pandit and Sikh presence in Kashmir. In three days there were four major attacks. There have been reports of forcible conversion also.

On December 23, at late night, terrorists tried to force their entry into Mahind village (Anantnag) and kill the minority members. Alert policemen immediately after noticing their movement swung into action and fired at them. The terrorists fled from the scene without causing any damage.

In Pulwama also on the same day terrorists sought to attack minority community at Panzer village. Policemen on guard duty fired at the terrorists, forcing them to take a hasty retreat. The two places have dozens of minority families.

On December 21, at around 8 PM, a group of terrorists entered Poshkreeri village, 18 kms from Anantnag town and opened indiscriminate fire towards the houses belonging to Sikhs. In the shoot out three Sikh women who were sitting inside the house were killed. A couple identified as Manjit Kour and her husband Trilok Singh sustained serious bullet injuries. The deceased were identified as Sunny Kour (18), Rosy Kour (20) and their cousin Julie (12)

The terrorists next moved towards the adjoining Hogam village and in a similar fashion opened fire killing two Kashmiri Pandit women, Lakshmi wife of Govind Ram and Sunita wife of Mohan Lal. Her two daughters-Doora and Shoba sustained injuries. Two families which migrated in the wake of killings told press persons in Jammu that they were sitting in their rooms after dinner, when terrorists started indiscriminate firing. Sunita was the first person who fell victim to the bullets of terrorists. Her three-year old son Ashu Raina is unaware of what has happened. Her other son Pankaj is in a state of shock. Recalling the incident, Sunita’s brother-in-law, Vijay Kumar said at about 7-15 PM family was watching TV when terrorists knocked at the front door. He added, “we sensed trouble, switched off all the lights and huddled in the back room of the house. The gunmen broke open the front door. They finally smashed the door of the room where four children, three ladies and we two brothers were hiding. Groping in dark, one of the three gunmen then fired a burst towards the room. My sister-in-law who was trying to block the door, was hit in the chest and died on the spot, while we had a miraculous escape”.

As the firing stopped, he said the family members ran away through the rear door and rushed towards the fields. “My mother and sister-in-law cried loudly. Hearing their cries, the neighbouring Muslim families took us to their homes,” said Vijay Kumar.

Doora Kumari and Suba Kumari, admitted in SMHS and Bone and Joint Hospital respectively with injuries remained unaware about the death of their mother. As if poverty and disease were not enough punishment for them, terrorist attack has left them shattered. Their father had died long back. Three years back, three of the five members had lost their eye-sight. Their two brothers are semi-blind. One of them is a casual labourer in PHE department earning less than Rs 2000. The family had been selling land regularly to ward off poverty and meet expenses for treatment. Suba is being treated for fractures in a leg and an arm and has lost her mental balance after the attack.

Narrating the incident, Doora said some gunmen barged into their house and started firing indiscriminately on family members. “We were three family members in a room and all of us were injured in the firing. But nobody raised alarm because of the terror. Blood was oozing out of our wounds but we were so terrorised that nobody shouted for two hours. Later I mustered some courage and shouted from the window. Then whole village assembled in the compound and took us to hospital.” She added, “when I heard the knock I smelt a rat. I first went into the room where my brothers were staying. I put a blanket over their head to save them from onslaught. Then I took the lantern and opened the door. Luckily the gunmen did fire toward us and the room in which my brothers were staying were spared”. Explaining the motive behind the attack, she said, “I fell it was an act of intimidation to force migration. We are not in a condition to migrate. We will die here.”

Of the 45 Kashmiri Pandit families living in Hogam village, more than twenty had migrated in 1990. Many other had abandoned their homes after Sangrampora, Wandhama and other massacres. Only seven families had stayed back, which too want to leave at the earliest.

Jarnail Singh, brother of Mohinder Singh said, “three to four gunmen encircled the two houses and asked the inmates to come out of their houses. As there was no electricity in the village, we switched off the lantern. The gunmen broke open a window and fired volleys of bullets. The three girls who were studying they were instantly killed.”

Sources said four days before the killings, Abu Obieda, “divisional commander” of Hizb for Anantnag had spoken to a local news agency, News and Feature Alliance (NAFA) on telephone. He had asked Jaish and Lashkar militants to stop killing of innocent locals. He had not mentioned anything about safety of non-Muslims. A section of the media, however, claimed that the killings were engineered to give a bad name to Hizbul Mujahideen, Obieda belongs to Syed Salahuddin group of Hizb. Hurriyat Conference, the political arm of different terrorist groups spearheading the ethnic-cleansing of non-Muslims to wash off its role called for a bandh on December 28. Instead of condemning the killings forthrightly, it sought to relieve criticism of the terrorists by demanding a “probe” at international level. It also made an attempt to link the militants’ killing engaged in crimes with the ethnic-cleansing of Pandits.

The Sikh community members were furious at the role of police guards stationed in Poshkreeri. Trilok Singh, one of the injured said, “the guards did not open a single fire despite being few hundred yards away from the massacre site. Had they fired the gunmen would have left the place at once. Senior officers of police claimed that police guards chased away the militants and even one of their constables was injured. Residents, however, did plain speaking to Director General of Police, AK Suri when he came to attend cremation. They told him that the police guards had bolted themselves in a secure room till the assailants showered bullets and killed three young girls. It was found that three to four of the nine guards were also on unauthorized absence when terrorists struck at the village. DGP issued on the spot suspension orders for negligence and dereliction of duty for Head Constable Ghulam Qadir, Constables, Gh. Mohi-ud-Din, Abdur Rehman, Nisar Ahmed, Bashir Ahmed, Riya Ahmed, Bashir Ahmed and Mohd Ashraf, besides SPO Jung Bahadur.

However, the role of two police constables at Hogam (Dachinpora) was appreciated and they were promoted as SGC. One of the constables, Shamsuddin was admitted in bone and Joint hospital with multiple fractures Shamsuddin said he was surrounded by around eight terrorists when he was fetching water from the public water-tap post. He added. “They asked me to accompany them to a Pandit house. When we reached there, around 10 to 15 gunmen were waiting. They asked me to shout at the inmates to open the door. But I resisted saying that I cannot do it. A local shopkeeper Shadi Lal, who was passing by saw us discussing. He then called the inmates to open the door. As the door opened they rushed towards it. They pushed me inside and fired indiscriminately. After a while they fled from the scene, I crawled to the police post and narrated the tale to my fellow colleagues, who then took me to hospital”.

Fear gripped the members of the Sikh community again. The community has so far witnessed four massacres in last two years leading to death of 50 members. The massacres took place at Wanpoh (5), Chattisinghpora (35) Mehjoor Nagar (7) and Poshkreeri (3). Recently there were also posters pasted on the walls of Amirakadal Gurudwara, asking Sikhs to leave the Valley. Sikhs have substantial business interests in this area. Presently Sikhs are scattered over 115 villages in Valley besides some townships. During 1947 Sikhs had been special target of tribal raiders and suffered maximum. Most of the Valley Sikhs have already constructed alternate homes in Jammu for shifting in case the things go bad for them in the Valley.