Authorities in South Kashmir’s Shopian tried to put on a brave face by claiming that no exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the district had taken place, but members of the minority community, who have since been camping in Jammu, ruled out the possibility of any plans to return to the Valley. .
While a verified Twitter handle of Shopian’s Information and Public Relations department claimed that the news of the departure of the “non-migrant Hindu population of Kashmir” was “baseless”, Ashwani Kumar Bhat, whose brother Puran Krishan Bhat was shot by terrorists in October. 16, told reporters in Jammu that he has migrated and will never return to the valley.
Authorities claimed on Twitter that “adequate and tight security arrangements have been maintained by the administration in the village. In other pockets of non-migrant Kashmiri Hindu settlements and villages, similar security arrangements are in place.”
Puran Krishan Bhat was killed by terrorists in Choudharygund area of Shopian at a place which had a minority police box in 20 meters and an army camp nearby.
The brother of the deceased said: “We have moved from there. I will not return. I swear on my children, I will not return until the last breath of my life.”
Pointing towards his children, he said that he will not return to Kashmir nor will he allow his children to go there. “I have a hundred kanals (five acres) of land there, but I will not return. Shall I go there to die?” he asked.
Bhat, who saw his brother die in front of his eyes, said he will quit his government job but will not return. “I don’t need anything,” he said.
Bhat took a dig at the administration over their statement of deputing police guards to protect them and said “when the killing of Sunil Kumar happened in Chatigam, we went to SP of Shopian – who is a woman and Major Sahib ( i We asked them to continue visiting our village – once a day. No one helped us – no one came here. We have not seen any police guards – they themselves live in fear.”
The cousin of the deceased said that the administration is issuing statements to the guards stationed in the village for security. “If they are issuing statements about the guards, we should have seen them (visiting our village)”.
We don’t even know if they (guards) have come for our safety. They never came out,” he said.
The brother was seen airing his views on various television channels.
Like him, another resident of Choudharygund, who did not want to be named, said he has left the harvested apples in his home compound as life is precious.
“God saved me because they wanted to hit me too. They had returned to school a few days ago, but I wasn’t there,” he said.
Another woman, who also moved to Jammu, said they were living in fear.
The nephew of the deceased said that while the authorities were claiming that adequate security arrangements had been made for minorities, “the situation was completely different on the ground”.
“The police personnel posted on security duty always sat inside (their picket). If they were outside, they would have been able to see the people. Ask anyone — ask the Kashmiri Muslims, ask the Hindus living there — if had they (the police) seen them?” he said.
As terrorists carried out a number of target killings recently, 10 Kashmiri Pandit families have left their village in Shopian district out of fear and reached Jammu.
Residents of Choudharygund said the recent terror attacks have caused a psychosis of fear among Pandits who lived in Kashmir during the worst period of terrorism in the 1990s and did not leave their homes.
“Ten families comprising 35 to 40 Kashmiri Pandits have migrated from our village due to fear psychosis,” a resident of Choudharygund village, who faced a death threat recently, told PTI.
(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a shared source.)
