Kashmiri Pandits are longing to return home and have urged the Union government to prioritise the most important bigger question of the government’s plan for the safe, secure and empowered return module for 7.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits back home in the Valley.
Speaking at a function to commemorate the martyrdom of Kashmiri Pandits massacred on March 23,2003 in Nadimarg, Kashmir, Supreme Court lawyer and noted Kashmiri leader Ashok Bhan wondered how long does the community have to wait for justice for the exiled Pandits.
Bhan urged the current Union government and the Lieutenant Governor’s LG administration to engage with the representatives and thought leaders of the exiled Pandit community to discuss the government’s plan for a safe, secure and empowered return module for 7.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits back home.
Remembering the martyrdom of 24 members of the Kashmiri Pandit community, including 11 women and couple of infants, on the night of March 23, 2003, Bhan said the victims ranged from a 65-year-old man to a 2-year-old boy.
On that night, a group of masked gunmen wearing army fatigues descended on Nadimarg, near Shopian in the Pulwama district. It was an isolated village on the banks of a stream and the gunmen announced it was a security crackdown, a common feature of those turbulent times.
They asked some of the Kashmiri Pandits in the village to come out of their homes. Then they lined up 24 members of the community and shot them dead one by one. A deadly massacre and genocide inflicted on the native Kashmiris of a composite habitat. Among those killed were 11 women and two infants.
The armed police personnel deployed to guard the village of composite habitation were overpowered, locked up in the picket and their weapons were stolen by the terrorists. The masked terrorists broke into houses of Pandits and dragged them out to fall in line. After the massacre, the surviving Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley, never to return.
The perpetrators were from the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the internationally-designated terrorist organisation, and were led by their self-styled ‘commander’ Zia Mustafa as was then reported by police. He was arrested in 2003 and held in prison.
In October 2021, Mustafa was taken out of jail by security forces to identify militant hideouts in Poonch. However, in the subsequent encounter with militants, he was killed in the cross-firing.
All efforts to set right and mainstream Kashmir Affairs are incomplete without the return of Kashmiris living in exile for last 33 years to the Valley and without their active participation in promoting the Idea of India process in Kashmir. ”Kashmir’s civilisation is in vacuum without the physical presence of Kashmiri Pandits,” Bhan said.