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Prime Targets
The Kashmiri Pandits
(Hindus) in the valley of Kashmir, irrespective of their age, sex, position
status or situation became the prime target of the terrorists' onslaught.
They were warned and threatened, individually and collectively, through
word of mouth, through insinuation and innuendo, through posters and press
and over loud speakers installed in thousands of mosques all over the valley.
Fear loomed large and the terrorist shadow stalked educational markets
and other public places wherever the Kashmiri Pandits had a representation,
however small. They were identified and denounced; hit lists were exhibited
on electric poles, office doors and entries to numerous institutions; and
the public at large was exhorted to watch them and hound them out. They
were followed and kidnapped from their homes and places of work and interrogated
and tortured. A spree of killings of the intellectuals of the community
started. This was followed by indiscriminate gunning down, hanging, dismembering,
tying with grenades and blasting into pieces, skinning, burning and sawing
alive the members of this ethnic minority of all walks of life. Many of
the victims after being butchered were thrown into streets as exhibits
for everybody to get terrorised. The bereaved were not permitted to mourn
the dead and perform the last rites. Those who dared to attend the funeral
were earmarked for reprisals. Molestation and rape was the order of the
day.
 
 
Ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits.
The gamut of the terrorists' depredations puts
the notorious programs in shade and leaves nobody in doubt about the design
of the terrorists to exterminate Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) who started
fleeing temporarily out of the valley to seek shelter in the Jammu province
of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, in Delhi and in other towns of India
during the months of January-March 1990. A large number preferred to stay
behind, partly hopeful of a let up in the persecution and the frantic killings
and partly on account of the reassurances by their friends, neighbours
and colleagues of the
Muslim majority community. However, indiscriminate
murders gained momentum as also the taunting, ridicule, accusations, denigrations
and warnings issued to the Pandits (Hindus ). Those who dared to return
to the valley even after a brief absence were frisked and taken for questioning
and accused of having spied against the terrorists and of having received
arms training to counter the terrorism. They were followed like a shadow
or given a time limit of a few hours or a day to quit the Valley.
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