Targeted killings bring back memories of 90s insurgency for Kashmiri Pandit

Rohit Sharma was 14 years old when insurgency broke out in Kashmir in 1990. He vividly remembers the winter of 1990 when Kashmiri Pandits were fleeing the Valley in hordes after militants started targeting their community members.

When a majority of the Pandit community fled from the Valley, his dad, a prominent jeweler in Srinagar decided to stay back along with his family. “Our Muslim neighbours stood by us like a rock and didn’t allow us to leave that time. But now it seems all of a sudden 1990 has revisited,” Sharma, now 46 told DH.

He said there is a lull and nobody knows who is the next target except The Resistance Front (TRF), an affiliate of Pakistan based Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT). “My mother calls me 10-times in a day to check where I am. In 1990s, when the militancy was its peak, everybody knew who the militant was. But today it is all murky and nobody knows who will hit you,” he rued.

His statement was echoed by Anil, another Kashmiri Pandit, who returned to Kashmir to take up government job under Prime Minister’s special package in 2010. “From 2010 till last year, we were living without any fear. But now it is becoming difficult. I have already shifted my family to Jammu due to fear,” he said.

Read | Let Pandits, others move to safety

Anil, whose kids are in school, said that it is a second trauma for him in the last 32 years. “When I was in school, my father had to do the same. And now when my kids are in school, the cycle is repeated. God knows for how long we will have to suffer like this,” he said.

The Pandits say that in normal circumstances resident welfare associations, masjid committees and even political parties used to come to the rescue of the minorities. “But now more than non-Muslims, terrorists are targeting local Muslims due to which there is complete silence and fear,” they said.

The representatives of the community allege that the bureaucracy in J&K was unable to resolve the ongoing crisis and separatists who could have come to their rescue are in disarray.

Sanjay Tickoo, who heads Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, said that when Kashmiri Pandits started to return to Valley in 2010 to take up jobs under the PM package, he approached moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq urging him to ensure that they feel comfortable.

“Mirwaiz directed his cadre to ensure that nobody harassed Kashmiri Pandits which restored trust and rebuilt the composite culture. It worked for around a decade. But who will I ask today for such help?," Tickoo, who represents the Pandit families who decided not to migrate in the 1990s, said.

Security agencies believe that the attacks on minority community are being carried out by ‘hybrid’ militants using pistols sometimes fitted with silencers. According to police, ’hybrid’ militants are not listed ultras, but radicalized and trained enough to carry out terror attacks and then slip back into the routine life.