Some crimes are not just heinous they are barbaric and macabre. Abduction, gang-rape and brutal killing of Sarla Bhat in April 1990 was just macabre. So was the gang-rape and murder of Girja Tickoo, who was sawed to death. Her body was found cut vertically into two pieces with a band-saw machine. But nobody believed that such crimes happened. Even the film “Kashmir Files”, which tried to picturise the sawing of the body of Girja Tickoo, while she was alive, was described as a “propaganda movie”.
Story of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus from Kashmir is always downplayed, if not denied outright. The year 1989-90 was not 2025-26. There was no social media. The legacy media always remained guarded and narrative always controlled. More so with all those working for national and international media being the locals, they had little sympathy for Kashmiri Pandits as most of them supported the militants’ cause.
While insurgency and terrorism in Kashmir are often justified and provided with an alibi that the elections held two years earlier were rigged, nobody ever talked about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits as how they were forced to flee their homes after an atmosphere of horror and terror was created in the Valley. Killings like those of Sarla and Girja were aimed at terrifying them to flee.
Rather, the exodus was blamed on Governor Jagmohan that he asked the Pandits to leave so that he would deal with the Muslims “effectively and exclusively”.
It is after 36 years that a chargesheet has been filed into the murder of Sarla Bhat. She was working as a nurse in the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura. While most of the Kashmiri Pandits had already left, she had stayed back apparently as she did not want to risk her job. She was kidnapped from outside the hospital. Her body was later found alongside a road in Srinagar. She was kept in captivity for a few days during which she was brutally tortured, raped and eventually killed.
According to the chargesheet, her abduction and murder were ordered by Yasin Malik, who was one of the prominent leaders of the terrorist organisation Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) at that time.
Besides Malik, there were four others who were directly involved in her rape and killing. They include Hamid Sheikh, Yousuf Sofi, Moahmmad Taploo and Khurshid Chalkoo. While Malik is in Tihar jail, Sheikh, Sofi and Taploo are already dead. Chalkoo is hiding in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Most of the terrorists were morally degraded and they would justify their depredations by giving religious reasons. It was something similar to what ISIS did with non-Muslim Christian and Yazidi women a few years back.
Since the scale of violence in Kashmir was less and since the victims were not from the western countries, nobody bothered to take note. While the BBC, which was considered to be the only source of credible information turned a completely blind eye towards the atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits, the national media remained oblivious. This was because every media group was represented by locals from Kashmir, who had their own “compulsions and interests” to play the terrorist narrative.
Also read: Who was Sarla Bhat? Brave nurse who defied terrorists in 1990
Story of Girja Tickoo is more horrible. While Sarla Bhat was kidnapped, raped and killed, Girja was subjected to more brutal and painful death. She belonged to a village in Bandipora. She was working as a lab assistant. She had migrated to Jammu in January 1990. As ill luck would have it, she returned home in June the same year to collect some things from home. She stayed with a Muslim colleague.
She was kidnapped from her Muslim colleague’s house. Nobody helped. In fact, nobody could. Kashmir at that time was completely under the control of terrorists. There was no state authority. Girja was abducted on June 19 and her body, sliced into two vertical parts, was found five days later. Post mortem revealed brutal physical and sexual assault and an equally brutal death as she was cut into two pieces on a band-saw machine.
Both Sarla and Gijra were accused of being “police informers”. Most of the Kashmiri Pandits had left by the time these two ladies were killed. As the details about their death spread, it sent shivers down the spine of everyone. Yet nobody was punished or held accountable. While the charge-sheet has been filed after 36 years, there is hardly any hope of justice. Three of the five culprits have died. Yasin Malik is in jail and another main culprit is living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
For anyone visiting Kashmir today, stories of Sarla and Girja would sound fictitious and imaginary. But for those who survived these stories, these will keep haunting. Like, the way people from this part of Punjab are received these days in ‘Pakistan Punjab’ with so much warmth and affection, nobody can imagine that this was the same Punjab where people belonging to one religion killed those belonging to the other religion. So much so, people have now started asking why did Punjab need to be partitioned as people were living in complete peace and harmony. The fact of about one million killings simply vanishes with small momentary gestures.
Same situation is in Kashmir today. As hundreds and thousands of tourists flock the Valley every year, with locals showing their “warmth” for the “guests”, none of them can ever imagine that Sarla Bhat and Girja Tickoo’s rape and murder took place at the same place.
About 700 Kashmiri Pandits were killed during the start of terrorism in Kashmir in 1989-90. Official record is of about 200 killings only. Most of these killings have gone unpunished.
One of the terrorists, Bitta Karate, infamously admitted in a television interview that he had killed at least 20 Kashmiri Pandits, only because they were Kashmiri Pandits. He was so glorified in Kashmir that one of the Kashmir Administrative Services officers, Assabah Arjumand Khan, married him as a matter of great honour for her having married such a great ‘mujahid’ (the holy warrior).
Reopening of Sarla Bhat’s case will provide hardly any consolation or solace to the Kashmiri Pandits, particularly to her family. It will only refresh the harsh memories and reopen the old wounds.
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