SC to take up on petition seeking probe into ‘genocide’ of Kashmiri Pandits

Supreme Court to hear a petition filed by Roots in Kashmir (RIK), seeking a SIT probe into Kashmir Pandits’ genocide.

Supreme Court will hear on November 22, the curative petition filed by Roots in Kashmir (RIK), seeking a SIT (Special Investigation Team) probe into Kashmir Pandits’ genocide. The RIK had to file the curative petition, before the Top Court, after its review plea was dismissed by the SC, in 2017 on the ground of 27 years delay to file the same.

The Curative petition is the last legal resort in the Indian judicial processs in a case. Roots In Kashmir is an enterprise launched by the Kashmiri Pandit Youth, to fight for many issues, including the Kashmir pandits genocide issue.

The petition stated that if the 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases can be reopened after 35 years, so why not the Kashmir Pandits genocide be opened. “There is no limitation period applicable in crimes against humanity,” the RIK petition said and pleaded to the Supreme Court for a SIT probe into these genocide case.

The three-judge bench, of the Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, and also comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer, will hear the RIK petition on November 22, Tuesday.

The local organization of pandits in Kashmir, Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti after carrying out a survey in 2008 and 2009, said that 399 Kashmiri Pandits were killed by insurgents from 1990 to 2011 with 75% of them being killed during the first year of the Kashmiri insurgency.  They began to leave in much greater numbers in the 1990s during the eruption of militancy, following persecution and threats by radical Islamists and militants.

The events of 19 January 1990 were particularly vicious. On that day, mosques issued declarations that the Kashmiri Pandits were Kafirs and that the males had to leave Kashmir, convert to Islam or be killed. Those who chose to the first of these were told to leave their women behind. The Kashmiri Muslims were instructed to identify Pandit homes so they could be systematically targeted for conversion or killing.

According to a number of authors, approximately 100,000 of the total Kashmiri Pandit population of 140,000 left the valley during the 1990s. Other authors have suggested a higher figure for the exodus, ranging from the entire population of over 150,000 to 190,000 of a total Pandit population of 200,000, to a number as high as 800,000.

Many of the refugee Kashmiri Pandits have been living in servile conditions in refugee camps of Jammu.  The government has reported on the terrorist threats to Pandits still living in the Kashmir region.

In 2010, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir noted that 808 Pandit families, comprising 3,445 people, were still living in the Valley and that financial and other incentives put in place to encourage others to return there had been unsuccessful. According to a J&K government report, 219 members of the community had been killed in the region between 1989 and 2004 but none thereafter.

How over 2 lakh Muslims were killed in Jammu which led to the Kashmir crisis

According to The Siasat Daily, After the Partition of India, during October–November 1947 in the Jammu region of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, many Muslims were massacred and others fled to West Punjab. The slayings were executed by extremist Hindus and Sikhs, aided and abetted by the forces of the Dogra State headed by Maharaja Hari Singh. The activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) played a crucial role in planning and executing the riots.

In November 1947, thousands of Muslims were massacred in the Jammu region by mobs and paramilitaries led by the army of Dogra ruler Hari Singh. The exact number of casualties in the killings that continued for two months is not known but Horace Alexander’s article on 16 January 1948 in The Spectator is much quoted; he put the number killed at 200,000 and nearly half a million forced into displacement across the border into the newly created nation of Pakistan and its administered part of Kashmiri.

This led to constant tragic bloodshed and retaliations in Kashmir is a tribulation that is not resolving.  It is time to heal the wounds and not keep instigating fresh attacks on Jammu and Kashmir.

Ever since the Abrogation of article 370 in 2019, Kashmiri Pandits say “Today Kashmir is more dangerous than the 1990s”.