Carnage sets off Pandits’ exodus

WANDHAMA, Jan 27: The gruesome killing of 23 Kashmiri Pandits on Monday has triggered off migration of the few Kashmiri Pandits who had endu...

WANDHAMA, Jan 27: The gruesome killing of 23 Kashmiri Pandits on Monday has triggered off migration of the few Kashmiri Pandits who had endured the turmoil of past seven years. At least three families immediately left their ancestral residences in Bandipora village today and a fear psychosis has gripped the minority community in the valley after the attack which has been claimed by an unknown outfit.

Recalling the incident, sixteen-year-old Manoj Kumar Dhar, the lone eyewitness to the carnage, said a group of masked militants came to his house at about 11:30 pm and forced all those inside to come out. “I jumped out of the wall of my house. As soon as my father, brothers and sisters came out, I saw the militants shooting them. They were crying and begging for life,” he said.

“One of the militants spotted me and asked me to come out as well but I hid myself beneath a heap of saw dust stored in the house. They then opened fire from all sides of the house and probably felt that I too was killed in thefiring,” said Kumar. “I cannot identify them but they were speaking in Urdu,” he continued in a choked voice. “Most of the men were in the nearby mosque as it was the holy night of Shab-i-Qader. It was only, when a group of our women came wailing that we came to know of the killings,” said Abdul Ahad, a village elder. The militants blasted the local temple which was in ruins. About 30 families of the Pandits are still living in the Ganderbal area while 200 more families are staying in different villages of Bandipore and other north Kashmir localities, deemed to be vulnerable for such attacks.

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SP Ganderbal, Mohammad Mubarak Ganai, told The Indian Express that the Pandits living in isolated areas have been asked to move to safer places, but they have declined the offer.

“We have eight Pandit families each in Manigam and Vusan, two in Nunar, two in Chitterkund, a single family in Vaskura and around nine families in other hamlets. As it is impossible to provide security to the families in thesevillages, we had requested them to shift their residences to Vakura army camp but they declined to do so,” said the SP.

Meanwhile, the police today said that they have recovered a letter in which an unknown militant organisation, Intikaam-ul-Muslimoon, has claimed responsibility for the massacre. “The letter that was tagged to one of the bullet-ridden bodies disclosed that this was the beginning of a series of such attacks aimed at taking revenge for the killings in Handwara.

A group of villagers from both the communities have blamed the “unwise” shift of an army camp from Wandhama last year for the tragedy.