Srinagar: In a move to unmask the perpetrators of 1998 Wandhama massacre, the State Investigation Agency (SIA) of Jammu and Kashmir Police has reopened the investigation into the heart-wrenching killings, in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits, including toddlers, were gunned down in Ganderbal district, officials said Tuesday.
The reopening of the case comes as part of an effort by the security agencies to re-launch probes into unresolved terror incidents involving the targeted killings of the minority Kashmiri Pandit community and to heal decades-old scars.
The horrors of January 25, 1998 night, the eve of Republic Day, continue to haunt the collective memory of the region, when a group of terrorists, disguised in Army uniforms, descended upon Wandhama village in central Kashmir and entered into four households belonging to Kashmiri Pandits for a cup of tea.
The terrorists engaged with the unsuspecting residents in conversation, coaxing four Pandit families, who had courageously chosen not to migrate during the exodus of the early 1990s, to assemble together.
Moments after a crackle on a walkie-talkie announced that the village was surrounded, the gunmen opened fire. Within minutes, 23 people from the community were mercilessly killed, including nine women and four children, two of them toddlers.
Among the fallen was a one-year-old toddler whose body was riddled with 18 bullet wounds. In a desperate act of motherly love, a mother had tried to shield her infant in her lap, only for both to be fallen to terror bullets.
The night’s solitary survivor, young Vinod alias Ashoo, lived to tell the harrowing tale after sneaking to the upper storey of his house and hiding himself beneath a heap of dried cow-dung. He listened in agonising terror as bursts of gunfire were answered by the shrieks of his loved ones, followed by a haunting silence that left him the sole bearer of Wandhama’s memory.
Though an FIR was lodged at the Ganderbal police station linking the massacre to the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the case has remained unsolved for almost 30 years. In March 2000, security forces killed Hizbul Mujahideen commander Hameed Gada alias Bombar Khan, who was believed to be the mastermind behind the Wandhama slaughter, in an encounter, but key co-conspirators were never brought to trial.
The case was highlighted that year at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
In its renewed crusade for justice, the SIA has also reopened probes into several other previous killings, which included the 1989 assassinations of prominent lawyer and BJP leader Tika Lal Taploo, and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, who had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death.
The agency recently concluded its investigation into the horrific April 1990 kidnapping and murder of Sarla Bhatt, a nurse at SKIMS Soura, submitting a comprehensive 737-page chargesheet naming jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik as a key accused.
Multiple raids were conducted earlier this month to unearth fresh evidence in the 1990 double murder of renowned Kashmiri Pandit poet Sarwanand Koul Premi and his son Virender Koul.
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