Kashmiri Pandits flee Kashmir Valley

‘Back-to-back killings have shattered our faith in the security system’

Hundreds of fear-stricken Kashmiri Pandits left the Valley for Hindu-majority Jammu district on Friday even as the Centre turned down their demand of relocation. Amid this, a prominent Pandits’ body, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), in an open letter to the J&K Chief Justice, sought his intervention to allow frightened Pandits to leave the Valley. 

Scores of vehicles, carrying Pandit employees and their families, left the Valley early in the morning from the Pandit transit colonies in south Kashmir’s Mattan and Vessu, Srinagar’s Sheikhpora and north Kashmir’s Baramulla and Kupwara.

Kashmiri Pandits living at the Mattan transit colony in Anantnag claimed that over 80 per cent of the families left for Jammu since June 1. “We get to hear only hollow assurances from the administration. We do not feel safe after the recent killings. Out of the 96 families living in the Mattan colony, only a dozen are left behind. They too will leave this place in coming days,” said a Pandit employee, on the condition of anonymity.

A majority of the 250 Pandit employees living in rented accommodations in Mattan area hired vehicles before sunrise and moved to Jammu district, which is around 290 km away from the Kashmir Valley.

“There is back-to-back killings in the Valley. The killings of a schoolteacher and a bank manager have shattered our faith in the security system. Our only demand is to relocate the employees outside Kashmir till the situation improves. Posting employees to district headquarters won’t help or protect them,” said a protesting Pandit in south Kashmir’s Mattan camp.  

The Jagti camp in Jammu, which was set up in the 1990s, received 120 Pandit families from north Kashmir’s Baramulla and Kupwara districts in the past 24 hours.

“The killing of Pandits has not stopped since 1990. In the 1990s, we knew where there was a greater degree of threat to life. This time we are not sure which place is safe,” Sunil, a Pandit employee, said.