Clueless in Kashmir

Nadimarg is one of the most gruesome carnages in the 13-year-long history of violence in Kashmir. The midnight assassins crossed all lines by dragging out people, showering them with bullets, killing infants, women, old people and even the physically challenged. In acts of extreme brutality, they even disfigured the faces of the victims. And they looted as well, taking away valuables from the houses and gold rings from the ears of dead women.

Who were these killers? Why did they commit such a gruesome carnage? Even as a week has passed and 24 bullet-riddled bodies have already been consigned to flames, security agencies and the police confess they have no clue about the perpetrators are, though the government blames the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e- Mohammad. ‘‘There is absolutely no concrete proof and it is difficult to pinpoint the culprits,’’ admits a senior army officer. ‘‘We generally get clues from the intercepts of the militants; this time around, there were none. In fact, they blame us (the army). The only clue may lie in the stolen goods — the valuables may eventually lead us to the culprits.’’

The obvious indicators — eyewitness accounts, relations of this Hindu village with its Muslim neighbourhood, the attire of the killers and even the way this carnage was executed — have all served to add to the confusion regarding the identity of the killers.

Locals testify to the warmth of the relations between Nadimarg and its Muslim neighbours. ‘‘People from more than 30 villages arrived here the morning after. We have been living here for generations. It is our home and we have never felt that we are different,’’ says Sheela, who lost five members of her family including two infant grandsons.

Neighbours from Sheikhpora, a Muslim hamlet located a stone’s throw away, address her as Bindre and it is not difficult to gauge the intensity of grief among them. ‘‘In 1990, when Hindus all over left the state, they stayed back on our assurances that nothing will ever go wrong,’’ says Mohammad Ismail Mir, an old farmer who has known Bindre since she came to the village after her marriage four decades ago. ‘‘I feel so guilty. We should have not stopped them when we knew we cannot do anything. Aasman peyi na chali chali — Kus insaan haki ye kareith (How can a human being commit such an act? Even the heavens will weep).’’

Bindre’s only daughter Jyoti, who was fortunate enough to escape the bullets, was a witness to the massacre. ‘‘Sanis gamas bano-vukh shamshaan (They turned our village into a crematorium),’’ she says. ‘‘They came, collected us one by one and then massacred everybody. My nephew was shot in his foot and he died in my lap. He was just two.’’

The girl consoling her is Shahen, her friend since school. ‘‘I just don’t understand why will anybody kill a child in front of her mother’’.

What hurts the survivors the most is the fact that some of the killers spoke in Kashmiri. ‘‘We know we have to spend the rest of our lives with our tears. But we will be always be haunted by the knowledge that there were Kashmiris among the killers,’’ says Bindre.

If they are unanimous on this count, everybody also agrees that the government has done little to assuage their pain. ‘‘They (the government) says it was done by Pakistan. I want to ask just one question: If Pakistan has entered so deep as to access this remote village, what is India doing about it?’’ says a middle-aged man, Bal Krishan, who had come all the way from Anantnag, to join the mourning. ‘‘We don’t know who is behind this massacre. But we know the government facilitated this massacre by their inaction. It is a conspiracy to deepen the wedge between Kashmiri Muslims and Hindus because we 9,000 Pandits, who still live here, can become the bridge between the two communities.’’

The villagers have a point. Both Hindu and Muslim villagers say that they had smelled tension for three days before the massacre. ‘‘The village head Avtar Krishan and his wife had seen some people moving around in the village two nights before the massacre,’’ says Bindre’s son Ramesh, who managed to evade the killers and ran 13-kms to seek help from the Zainpora police station. ‘‘When we got suspicious, two villagers — Deep Kumar and Chandji — went to the deputy commissioner and asked for help. He was callous enough to ask for a written application, and then did nothing about it. We informed the police too — in fact, the SHO of the Zainpora police station visited us during the day preceding the massacre and asked his men to be alert.’’

When contacted, Deputy Commissioner, Pulwama, Naseema Lankar said the ‘‘villagers visited the DC, Anantnag, because half the village falls in Anantnag’’. Deputy Commissioner, Anantnag, was not available for comments.

Barely a hundred feet away from the room where Jyoti sits, the empty, sandbag-walled police picket has come to symbolise police inaction. Ramesh says that he reached the police station within 30 minutes of the intruders entering the village. ‘‘They asked me to stay put in the police station, but took hours to leave themselves,’’ he alleges. ‘‘The policemen supposed to guard us here were sleeping in their room when it happened. Why did they surrender without any resistence whatsoever? We suspect them as well.’’

SSP, Pulwama, Vipul Kumar admits that the policemen guarding the village did not react at all. ‘‘The first police team arrived from Shopian around 3.30 am. The Zainpora police station doesn’t have enough strength to react to such a carnage so we sent our people from Shopian,’’ he says.

The army, however, is located much closer to Nadimarg, so why did they fail to react immediately? ‘‘I received the information around 12.30-12.35 am and alerted all the forces, including the camp of 1 Rashtriya Rifles that lies a few kms from Nadimarg,’’ Kumar says.

A senior army officer says that the army does take some time to react. ‘‘We had to prepare ourselves, and then walk to the village, that too in the middle of the night. Our troops reached the village at the same time when the police reached,’’ he told The Sunday Express.

The pattern and the attire of the killers, too, adds to the confusion. All eyewitnesses admit that the killers were wearing army fatigues, bullet-proof jackets and helmets. Although militants do use army fatigues, never before have they been known to use bullet-proof vests and helmets. In fact, security agencies, too, admit that the presence of this paraphrenalia has come as a surprise.

Among the victims and the security agencies, there is just one demand: an independent probe that will asnwer all these questions. At stake, after all, is the future of Kashmir and its people.