19/01/90: When Kashmiri Pandits fled Islamic terror - Kanchan Gupta

Srinagar, January 4, 1990. Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu and Kashmir's secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.

In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference government abdicating all responsibilities of the State. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans.

Reports of killing of Hindus, invariably Kashmiri Pandits, begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.

Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.

Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: "Be one with us, run, or die!"

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Jagmohan arrives to take charge as governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah, whose pathetic, whimpering, snivelling government has all but ceased to exist and has gone into hiding, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order. But it fails to have a deterrent effect.

Throughout the day, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.

As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: 'Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai' (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar); 'Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa' (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah); 'Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san' (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, noted lawyer and BJP national executive member, by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989. Soon after that, Justice N K Ganju of the Srinagar high court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into bits and pieces at a sawmill.

In villages and towns across the Kashmir valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Kashmiri Pandits. With no government worth its name, the administration having collapsed and disappeared, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.

And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: to flee their homeland to save their lives from rabid jihadis. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 2005. There are no Kashmiri Pandits in Srinagar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Kashmir valley; they don't live here anymore. You can find them in squalid refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi. As many as 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits have fled their home and hearth and been reduced to living the lives of refugees in their own country.

Two-thirds of them are camping in Jammu. The rest are in Delhi and in other Indian cities. Many of them, once prosperous and proud of their rich heritage, now live in grovelling poverty, dependent on government dole and charity. In these 15 years, an entire generation of exiled Kashmiri Pandits has grown up, without seeing the land from where their parents fled to escape the brutalities of Islamic terrorism, a land they dare not return to, although that land still remains a part of their country.

A large number of them are suffering from a variety of stress and depression related diseases. A group of doctors who surveyed the mental and physical health of the Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps, found high incidence of 'economic distress, stress induced diabetes, partial lunacy, hypertension and mental retardation.' Statistics reflect high death rate and low birth rate among the Kashmiri Pandit refugees.

And thereby hangs a tragic tale that has been all but wiped out from public memory.

An entire people have been uprooted from the land of their ancestors and left to fend for themselves as a weak-kneed Indian state shamelessly panders to Islamic terrorists and separatists who claim they are the final arbiters of Jammu and Kashmir's destiny. A part of India's cultural heritage has been destroyed; a chapter of India's civilisational history has been erased.

Had this tragedy occurred elsewhere in Hindu majority India, and had the victims been Muslims, we would have described it as 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide.' We would have made films with horror-inducing titles. We would have filed cases in the Supreme Court of India. Our media would have marshalled remarkable rage in reporting the smallest detail.

But, this tragedy has occurred in Muslim majority Kashmir valley, and the victims are all Hindus, that too Pandits. What has been lost is part of India's Hindu culture, what has been erased is integral to India's Hindu civilisation.

Therefore, the government makes bold to record that the Kashmiri Pandits have "migrated on their own" and their 'displacement (is) self-imposed;' the National Human Rights Commission, after a perfunctory inquiry, refuses to concede that what has happened is 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing,' though facts add up to no less than that, never mind that 300,000 lives have been destroyed.

And, our jhola-wallah brigade of secular activists rudely turn up their noses to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits: Hindu sorrow, inflicted by Islamic terror, stinks.

Today, on January 19, the 15th anniversary of the forced flight of Kashmiri Pandits, look back at India's wretched history of secular politics and consider the terrible price the nation has paid at the altar of appeasement because the Indian State has, and continues to, toe the line of least resistance.

Reflect. Resolve. React.

https://m.rediff.com/news/2005/jan/19kanch.htm

Hurriyat Truth Tapes

#ITFBlive Following the India Today Expose, the case against #BittaKarate has been reopened and he has been taken to an undisclosed location for questioning by NIA #HurriyatTruthTapes

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155897714387119&id=23230437118

23 Winters by Rajesh Jalla

Brilliant documentary on Kashmiri Pandit exodus by Rajesh Jalla

Open letter to Shehla Rashid from a Kashmiri Hindu

Shehla Rashid,

I am Aditya Tikoo. It was the morning of 19th January 1990. I (then 5) was playing with my mother on the bed. She was 7 months pregnant. She took me in her lap and asked – “what do you want – baby brother or sister?”. “Brother” – I replied. She kissed my forehead and held her hand on my head in affection.

Suddenly we heard a noise outside. It was some mob that was nearing our house. It kept getting noisy with each moment. My father who had gone outside rushed into the house and came to our room. I saw his eyes full of fear for the first time. He was a school master in Srinagar. “They are coming”, he said.

I felt my mother’s grip around me was tightened suddenly. I looked at her face. She fainted. I asked, what happened? She almost cried, said- nothing Bachcha. She covered me with her shawl. I could clearly hear her heartbeats as my ears were pushed against her. Her heart was beating abnormally. I could not see her face now. It was all dark inside. But now I could realise, she was wiping her tears.

The procession was now outside our locality which had 7-8 Hindu homes. Someone from the mob shouted – “Thats the master’s house”. And then started the announcement from the nearby mosques – “Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san” (we want to become Pakistan with Hindu women not with their men). It was announced by the mob. All men must leave valley leaving behind their women. Some of them kicked the gate and pelted stones at the window. We were terrified. I was in mother’s arms. Who was shivering. Carrying three hearts. Two within, one in arms.

Mosques started making announcements after announcements. It was a recorded cassette with Islamic songs warning the idolaters. To free Kashmir from Kufra. Azadi ka matlab kya La ilaah illillaah.

Few minutes later, 3-4 males from the locality knocked the door. My father opened it in fear. They were Hindu neighbours. Came to inform we are leaving in 2 hours. They have gone mad. They won’t listen to us. They won’t let us live anymore. This is our last day in valley.

While they were discussing how to flee, those words of mob – Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san were playing in my mind endlessly. I only knew a woman in my life. She was my mother. I asked myself, what will they do with my mother? Why do they want her for Pakistan? I asked after a silence – Maa, what are they saying? Who are they? Why will they take you away? Will I go with you?

Na bachcha. I am your mother. I will be with you always – she cried bursting into tears.

In few hours, my father arranged tickets for us. Mother packed a few things – some jewellery, cash and a Shiva Ling. I was looking at her in fear while she was packing. She was constantly crying. She consoled me a couple of times and pretended she is fine. But I knew she wasn’t.

We left home in the noise of loudspeakers from mosques. I can still hear those voices. Those aggressive tones, words and call for action. I could see skullcaps around staring at us with the glare of victory. Eyes that wanted to peel the skin off my mother and eat her flesh.

My father tried to pick me up since mother was advised not to lift heavy things. I thought if I leave her, she will go with mob.

I cried like never before. I said – Maa take me with you. Don’t leave. She tried to explain- I am not leaving. I am with you. Just be with Dad. I refused. My father cried for the first time. He forcibly snatched me from mother again. I was so terrified that I almost felt unconscious.

When I got my consciousness back, I found myself in mother’s lap in the bus. She was crying and thanking God. We fled the valley. There were thousands like us. We lived in a tent in Jammu for next 2 months. A lot happened there.

My mother had miscarriage. She lost the child. She lost the smile forever. A few years ago, I got to know the full story. When I fell unconscious, she did not let Dad touch me. She carried me for all the time so that when I open my eyes, I find her right in front. Because this is what I wanted. To be carried by her. She walked and ran for 5 long kilometers carrying two children – one in arms, one inside to catch the bus. She got the bus but lost her other child.

We are settled in Delhi now. With her sacrifice and blessings, I am doing well in life. My mother doesn’t talk much.

Listen Shehla Rashid, I am not a storyteller. Neither are you some dear to me with whom I wanted to share what I never did till today.

I just want you to know one thing. Whenever my mother listens to the Azadi slogans or Kashmiriyat or La ilah illillaah on TV in Kashmir or Delhi, she sees her child bleeding to death. She cries in other room. Thinking about her child. Who was snatched away from him by the slogans of Azadi, Pakistan and La ilaah illillaah.

Your slogans and defence of Azadi lovers remind my mother of her child who was brutally murdered by you, your fathers and Islamists.

Thus, you are my enemy. Whenever someone tries to harm you or slaps you or beats you or threatens you, I feel he is standing with me for my lost sibling who I never saw. Whenever someone silences the voices of Azadi, hum le ke rahenge azadi, hum kya chahte azadi etc whether Army in Kashmir or people like ABVP or Agniveer in Delhi, we feel as if someone is coming to rescue us and our lost baby.

I find you personally responsible for tears of blood my mother shed all these years. You and millions of Azadi seeker Islamist swines are the reason she has never smiled since 19th January 1989. She is the victim. You are the attackers. Game will begin now.

You Jihadis will be slapped, beaten up and destroyed wherever you are. Those whom army can’t shoot, will be taken care of by us. You cry victim. We will beat you more. For our mother’s blood. For her tears. For her lost child. For her lost smile.

For all those hundreds of mothers whom you raped. For all mothers whom you abducted and snatched away from their children forever. Mothers who are still missing from the valley. Mothers whose breasts were cut off with the slogans of Allahu Akbar. Mothers whose private parts were mutilated with slogans of Islam Zindabad. Mothers whose thighs were tattooed with Islam Zindabad. Mothers whom you disrobed. Mothers whom you forced to parade naked in front of their children.

Whatever has happened to you is just a trailer. You cry that a few stones hit you and gave you scratches. Know that my mother almost bled to death. My mother saw her child bleed to death. Yours is a drama. Hers was real.

We swear to the dignity of all those mothers. All rapist Jihadi Kashmiri Islamists will be silenced by all means. Kashmir is not yours. Forget about it. Forever.

– From a real Kashmiri and son of Mother India

PS : The post has been edited for few typos. This Brother (name changed) contacted Agniveer with following message:

Vashi Bhai, my salutes to Agniveer! Sanjeev Bhai and you are doing greatest service to the nation. I am sharing this letter with you so that you can publish it. I want you to post it for me. I know not many have guts to do it. But you are different. I hope you will do it. Always with you. Thank you in advance. And count me in for service of Bharat Mata.

http://agniveer.com/open-letter-shehla-rashid-kashmiri-hindu/

When They Killed My Mom for being a Kashmiri Hindu

In 1990 Kashmir witnessed the Genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, the target killing of Kashmiri Hindus started in 1989 with the killing of ‘Tika Lal Taploo’ and continued till the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Hindus in Nadimarg. My ‘Maa’ ‘Teja Dhar’ was among those unfortunate Kashmiri Pandits who were killed in Kashmir because of only fault of their’s, for being ‘Kaffir’.

It was 30th June 1990 ‘Haar ashtami’ day, my mother and father had finished with their food. My father’s name is Roop Krishen Dhar and he was a Labour officer at that time. After having his meal he went for a stroll outside and went to his friends house. My mother along with our elderly neighbour was at home. Around 7:30-8:00 pm some persons came to our home and we’re looking for my father. They shouted for my father. My mom did not open the door instead she urged that she is alone at home and they could meet my father the next day. Instead of this they broke open our gate and came inside searching for my father. They searched him everywhere and made a mess of our place. When they were unable to find my father they went near our elderly neighbour and slapped him hard on his face thrice. My mom began shouting that “Buddha ha morukh”. (Old men has been beaten).

Meanwhile the terrorists began moving to our main door when one among them, who was hardly at a distance from my mom, shot her thrice. The bullets hit my mom’s abdomen And she started bleeding. After this the terrorist’s surrounded our entire mohalla so that they could harm my father also. But my fathers friend had heard this and did not allow my father to move out. Finally at almost 10 pm the terrorists moved from our place and my fathers friend and my father had a chance to come home. My father rushed to a hospital and asked for ambulance and the idiotic doctors told him to report the case first as it was a police case. My father then rushed to Mahrajgunj police station, lodged a FIR, and then with a help of ambulance rushed my mother to the state hospital. In between all this the time was simply running out and it was almost 12 am when my mother was shifted to hospital. She had lost so much of blood till that time. My father got busy with the hospital and police formalities and after some time he saw my mother was left behind unattended and doctors were just asking her the details of how she got shot and all. My father screamed at the doctors that till now they should have operated upon her instead of asking her the nasty questions.

The Doctors who were also sympathetic towards terrorists, gave lame excuses that they did not have blood etc. Then they shifted my mother to the OT wherein my father firmly believes that my mother was not operated. Till 8 in the morning my mom was fighting death. She wanted to see me. My father had sent me Jammu early as these terrorists used to kidnap young girls. I was her only child whom she longed to see. But she could not fight with the destiny and these morons (Doctors). She succumbed to her injuries at 8:00 am. My father with the help of army personnel’s performed her last rites there only. I could not see my mothers dead body. After the last rites my father was sent to some hotel, and once my mothers Asti visarjan was done my father left for Jammu where me and rest of the family members were mourning my mothers death.

I was just in 6th standard when they snatched my mother away from me. It is still hard for my family and me to believe that mom is not there. My Maasi (Aunty) is still in a state of shock. Many a times she asks my father that if really my mother has been killed.

http://theimmortalhimalayas.com/when-they-killed-my-mom-for-being-a-kashmiri-hindu/

"Truth About Kashmir : Story of Kashmir and Kashmiri Hindus" by Sushil Pandit at IIT Madras

Kashmiri Pandits observe 'black day' against 1931 riots

Jammu, Jul 13 (PTI) A group of displaced Kashmiri Pandits today observed 'black day' to commemorate the July 13, 1931 riots against the community in the Valley and demanded better security, especially in the wake of violence following the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.

"The situation has not changed from 1931 till today.

Kashmiri Pandits were attacked then and even today in 2016 they are attacked," Ravinder Raina, President, All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference (ASKPC) said.

He demanded better security to the community in Jammu and Kashmir after he alleged that stones were pelted at the houses of Kashmiri Pandits following the death of the Hizbul commander.

Anoop Bhat, Coordinator, Roots in Kashmir (RIK), said "whenever the majority population of the Valley has any issue with the ruling dispensation, the minority community faces the brunt." 

"The July 13, 1931 riots, 1986 South Kashmir riots or the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits are the prime examples of how the Kashmiri Pandit community has constantly lived in fear of life and honour," he said.

RIK spokesperson Aroop Rayu said the Kashmiri Pandits currently living in the state are in dire need of a "full proof security" and that the Centre should rethink its composite township model.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/7650752_Kashmiri-Pandits-observe--black-day--against-1931-riots.html

A Mind Of Winter - Twenty-five years into exile, a Pandit selects memory props to remind him like shrapnel pain of the day his family looked its last upon Kashmir Valley

 

National / Essays MAGAZINE | JAN 26, 2015 Memory sharper The author is the boy with the toy gun ESSAY A Mind Of Winter Twenty-five years into exile, a Pandit selects memory props to remind him like shrapnel pain of the day his family looked its last upon Kashmir Valley RAHUL PANDITA I often think of a man I saw dead 30 years ago in Srinagar on the road outside the Silk Factory. The man had died after being hit by a truck; he lay face down, and the pieces of meat he was carrying in a newspaper sheet lay strewn all over him. The bus from which I saw him stopped for a moment and I remember trying to read the crumpled and stained newspaper. I wanted to read the printed matter so that it could serve as a prop to remember the dead man. I always needed a prop to remember things by. Six years after I saw that dead man, I was in a taxi, huddled with my parents, who like every Kashmiri Pandit at that time were desperate to see the light on the other end of the Jawahar tunnel. While crossing south Kashmir, we came across a man pushing a wheelbarrow on the road; he looked at us in disgust, pumped his fist in the air, and shouted: “Maryu, Batav, maryu! (Die, you Pandits, die!).” The man’s  wheelbarrow and his raised fist are among the many props reminding me of my exile. Anniversaries are also like props. January 19 this year, for example, will mark 25 years of our exodus from the Kashmir Valley. I don’t know whether this date means something to my father. I don’t think he will even remember it. His day will be the same: he will wake up, worry about what we will cook for lunch, ask me with remarkable sangfroid if I have plans to get married, recite mantras in front of a picture of our ancestral goddess. Later, he will ring up the grocer to order something, beginning with: “Hello, Mintuji, mein Uncle bol raha hun!” and then place his order. Earlier, I’d find it funny, since I thought Mintu must be dealing with 50 uncles like Father. But then I paid attention and realised Mintu never asks: “Which uncle?” The system worked perfectly for Father, the groceries always got delivered on time. That is how he operated back home in Kashmir; that is how it works for him in Gurgaon. But I know Father misses home. We never talk about it. Not even when he is watching DD Kashmir, when he is humming along with Tibet Bakal singing a Krishan Joo Razdan Leela, an ode to Shiva. Father has never returned to Kashmir since April 4, 1990. I don’t think he wants to. The Kashmir he left 25 years ago has changed. And he remembers every moment of the time that change occurred. So January 19, in his mind, is no different from all those days of fear and trauma in 1989-90. As Robert Frank writes in La memoire des Francais, “That which is sadly memorable is not co-memorable.” Somehow, in my head—and perhaps that is the way it is with every son and daughter—Father has always been ‘old’. But how old was he when we left home? He was 44. Forty-four! At that age, like thousands of other Kashmiri Pandit parents, he had to provide for the family in so uncertain times. At that age, he lost everything he had so lovingly built along with my mother: a home, its red-cemented corridor, its lawn, its kitchen garden, its windows with stained glass, its wardrobes, its false ceiling, its book-shelves. Everything my parents earned for years was diligently put into our home. And, suddenly, one day, your neighbours, your colleagues, your friends, your grocer and your milkman decide that you cannot live in a home that you built with your sweat and blood. They also decide that it is time for you to leave not only your home, but also the land where your ancestors lived for thousands of years. So they burst out on the streets on the night of January 19, 1990, and shout on loudspeakers from the mosques all over the Valley that they want Kashmir to become Pakistan, where only Pandit women (and no men) will be allowed. Oh, that night! How can I forget it! How can any Kashmiri Pandit forget it! But I am still searching for more and more props to remember that night. I want it to be like shrapnel pain. Here is one prop I acquired recently: on that night Doordarshan was playing a V. Shantaram film, Teen Batti, Chaar Raasta. Also, that night, along with frenzied cries for our annihilation, they played a song used in Afghanistan to inspire the anti-Soviet militia: Khoon-e-shahidan rang laaya, fatah ka parcham lehraya, jaago jaago subah hui (The blood of the martyrs has come true, the flag of victory has been unfurled, wake up, wake up, he dawn has appeared). It is now available on YouTube and, sometimes, when a few friends get silly drunk, we play it on and laugh as we imitate the singer’s nasal drone. This is what I believe Michael Taussig called the “normality of the abnormal” inNervous System, when he referred to the notion of “despair and macabre humour”. But I cannot play the song when Father is around. I cannot play it to a man who spent that entire night standing at his window, offering the solace of his presence to an old woman who was alone in the neighbouring house, as mobs outside were calling for the death of Pandits. I cannot play it to a woman, then a child, whose mouth was stuffed with Parle-G biscuits by her mother to prevent her from crying and attracting the attention of the mob outside her home. I cannot play it to the widow of Naveen Sapru, who at the age of 37 was waylaid by a mob outside a mosque and then shot. “Bus, be moodus wanye (Okay, I have died now),” he told his murderers, after which he was shot again and silenced forever. Naveen was on his way to collect his coat from a tailor. But he was killed before that. Two years ago, while in the US, I bought a coat from Macy’s and it reminded me of him. Did anyone collect his coat later? Twenty-five years is a long time. For a refugee, it indicates a sense of permanent exile. In exile, most of us are doing well for ourselves. But beneath our tiepins, our PowerPoint presentations, our single malts, our Harvard ‘five-foot shelf’ classics, we suffer from an acute sense of homelessness. In exile, our achievements are like pieces of meat over that man’s dead body. In exile, we are like Orwell’s Unhappy Bella, waiting for unknown fishermen to sing the sad song of our betrayal. We wait for the spring. But on January 19, twenty-five years later, the exile is winter. A mind of winter, as Wallace Stevens would have preferred to call it. (Rahul Pandita is the author of Our Moon Has Blood Clots (2013), a memoir of exile from Kashmir.) Click here to see the article in its standard web format

 

 

Silent Sit-In Protest on occassion of Kashmiri Pandit Exodus Day

Roots in Kashmir, observe a silent sit in protest to commemorate the Kashmiri Pandit Exodus Day on 19^th Jan. The Kashmiri Pandits mark this day as a grim reminder of their 24th year in exile, as refugees in their own country.

 

In a silent sit in they will remember all those who were lost to the 1^st wave of fanaticism which was followed by targeted killings, rapes, arson, massacres and destruction of their religious places which forced Kashmiri Pandits to exile.

Venue: Jantar Mantar,New Delhi

Day & Date: Sunday, ,19^th Jan,2014

Time: 3.00 PM

 

For Further Information contact:

Amit Raina-98999972462

Amal Magazine-9873900479

Govt clueless about death toll of Pandits in the Valley

Hindustan Times (Yahoo News)

Sat, Jun 21 01:10 AM

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The Centre may have the number of security personnel or militants killed in J and amp;K since the outbreak of violence in 1989, but it does not have any count of the Kashmiri Pandits who fell prey to insurgency. This admission, by the Centre, came in response to an RTI application filed by a Kashmiri Pandit, Aditya Raj Kaul, who wanted to know how many of his community members were killed in the state since 1989.

"J&K Police has not shared information on the killings of Kashmiri Pandits with the Central Government," the Union Home Ministry had said in its reply. Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police Kuldeep Khoda told HT that sharing of information with the Centre was a routine matter.

"We furnish whatever information is sought from us." The RTI came in the wake of a report, carried by a newspaper recently, and said to have been compiled by the J&K Police for the first time since the outbreak of violence in the Valley.

It said militants had killed 209 Kashmiri Pandits since 1989. The report also said 31 militants were booked for killings in 24 out of 140 cases while killers in 115 cases remain unidentified or untraced.

"Since we contest the numbers of Kashmiri Pandits killed as cited by the report, we wanted to cross check it. The fact that all 31 militants charge-sheeted for killing Kashmiri Pandits were on bail was what prompted me to seek more information about it" Kaul said.

The Ministry said while 20,621 militants had been killed between January 1990 and April 2008 about 5147 security personnel laid down their lives while fighting terrorism. Kaul had filed another RTI with the Home Ministry, seeking details on the Wandhama massacre, in which militants killed 23 Kashmir Pandits on January 25, 1998.

However, the Centre again had no information about the incident. "We wanted to know what real progress had been made in this case and why wasn't it referred to a better agency had the local police failed to make any headway," said Kaul.

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Pictures - 20th June - International Refugee's Day - New Delhi Seminar
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The PANELISTS - Gautam Kaul, Ex-DG-ITBP, Mukul Sharma, Dir.-Amnesty Inte'l India, Tarun Vijay, Columnist, Aasha Khosa, Journalist.

A section of the audience.

The audience keenly watching the audio-video presentation on Wandhama.

A Delegate making a point to Mukul Sharma, Director - Amnesty Inte'l India.