Two communities seek shelter in each other’s arms

For most of the afternoon, the village alternated between silence and tears and when the time came to take the bodies away for the cremation, the message couldn’t have been clearer: ‘‘Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai, Aapas mein hain bhai bhai’’. ‘‘Yeh maatam sahi hai, yeh tamasha nahi hai’’. (This mourning is for real, this isn’t a show.)

The words bounced off the mud-and-brick houses and even the security force men watched the villagers of this remote part of the Valley with disbelief. ‘‘If people speak out against such heinous crimes, this might force the perpetrators to think and stop,’’ a security force officer said. ‘‘We have witnessed dozens of such massacres and everytime it would get a communal hue. Muslims neighbours did not dare to venture close to Chittisinghpora after Sikhs were killed in a similar fashion. The Sikh villagers too were furious and did not hide their anger. But here the perpetrators seem to have failed’’.

In fact, it was hard to look for the Hindu survivors among hundreds of women mourners. Usha Devi had lost her husband, son and mother-in-law in the midnight massacre and sitting around her, crying bitterly, were Muslim women from the neighbourhood. ‘‘We don’t believe this could happen here,’’ said Khatija Bano, a housewife. ‘‘I am shocked. Why will anybody kill these poor people? They had nothing to do with anything. They were struggling like all of us for two meals a day here in this far off village,’’ she said. ‘‘They had not left the village because they had always felt safe here. It is their home like it is our home’’.

In a corner a group of elderly Muslim men had gathered around an old man trying to console him. Dwarka Nath had come all the way from Fatehpore village in Anantnag. He had lost his two daughters along with their entire families. The only survivor is a three-month old baby, who had been sleeping and had escaped the eye of the killers. ‘‘I had been here yesterday. I had come with a gift for my grandson Suraj. He had turned just three. Today I woke up and heard all of them are dead,’’ he wailed.

The killers did not even spare the children. ‘‘They (the killers) had left and reached near the school (a few dozen metres away) when they heard the cries of a child. I heard one of them shout to others that there is some work still to be done. Then I heard a gun shot. Later I got to know it was two-year-old Manu,’’ said one of the few lucky survivors, Mohan Lal Bhat.

Who were the killers? ‘‘We have no idea. They were dressed up as armymen but then few of them spoke in Kashmiri and their shoes were also different,’’ Bhat said.

The general perception among the survivors is that the killers were militants. The police and the security agencies, however, did not have any clues. ‘‘We always would get to know the identity of perpetrators like the militant organisation they belonged to etc from the intercepts but there has been none till now,’’ said M A Anjum, Deputy Inspector General of Police, South Kashmir.

He said that the policemen guarding the village had been ‘‘over-powered’’ by the killers. ‘‘They even took away eight rifles and a wireless set from our men,’’ he said.

‘‘We will interogate them and if this amounts to an act of cowardice, they will be taken to task,’’ he said. He admitted that no policeman had been on guard duty at the time of the incident.

In fact, the police wireless set was the only mode of communication available in the village and if a villager had not risked his life and walked eight km to reach the nearest police station in Zainpora, the outside world would not have known about the massacre till the next morning.