Why charge sheet in Pandit Sarla Bhat’s killing a milestone for J&K police? | Explained
The Story So Far: After a gap of 36 years, the J&K Police’s special cell State Investigation Agency (SIA) filed a charge sheet in the
The Story So Far: After a gap of 36 years, the J&K Police’s special cell State Investigation Agency (SIA) filed a charge sheet in the killing of Kashmiri Pandit Sarla Bhat, who worked as a nurse at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). The charge sheet named Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik as one of the five accused. Out of the five accused, only two, including Malik, are still alive. The SIA, which started re-investigating the case in 2020, decided to initiate proclamation proceedings against the absconding terrorist, Khurshid Ahmad Chalkoo, “the man who pulled the trigger”. He is believed to have exfiltrated to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). Meanwhile, the SIA charge sheet does not mention any rape. What is the significance of this case? The killing of the 27-year-old Pandit nurse was among the first cases of targeted killing of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley following the armed insurrection in 1989. According to official listing, the first Pandit killing took place on September 14, 1989 of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, an advocate and senior BJP leader and then Pandit Neelkanth Ganjoo, a former judge who had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death in a murder case. These targeted killings eventually led to mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits outside Kashmir valley. The SIA said Sarla Bhat was abducted from the vicinity of SKIMS on 18 April 1990, subjected to brutal torture and physical assault, and horrendously killed by automatic rifle fire at Omer Colony, Malbagh, Srinagar. The filing of the charge sheet is seen by the family and the entire Pandit community as a step towards justice.
The magnitude of the migration, the militant violence triggered, can be gauged from the fact that over 60,452 Pandits registered themselves as migrants by 2014, as the community was displaced to different parts of the country, including Jammu that is winter capital of J&K. Why was there a delay in the charge sheet? Kashmir witnessed targeted killings of both Muslims, mostly affiliated to the Conference (NC), and Pandits in the 1990s. Local youth in hundreds joined militant ranks and started attacking security forces across the length and breadth of the Valley. It was only after JKLF chief Malik declared unilateral ceasefire in 1994 that the group’s violence ebbed. As part of an unwritten agreement between JKLF and the then Central governments, no cases were pursued against Malik. A pointer to that was in 2009 when the Srinagar wing of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act (TADA) court stayed the trials and directed that proceeding “to remain in abeyance” in two key cases faced by Malik, which included the killing of Indian Air Force men in Srinagar’s Rawalpora area and kidnapping of e Union minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed’s daughter in 1989. On re-opening of the case, the SIA said it remained unresolved “owing to the extraordinary circumstances prevailing during the peak years of terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. It said the atmosphere of fear, intimidation and terror created by terrorist organisations had severely impacted the ability of witnesses to come forward and disclose material facts. The Sarla Bhat case became one such symbol of the dark chapter of terrorism that engulfed the Kashmir Valley, said the SIA in the charge sheet.
The BriefWire