The night of 19th January 1990 will be considered,
in the history of Kashmir, of Bharat and I believe in the history of humanity,
as the darkest, ugliest and most painful night.
But prior to that night,
what was unfolding in Kashmir?
It was crucial for me to know those facts.
As those are the facts have been distorted and twisted,
and presented before the Indian people.
On 26th January 1990 Kashmir would be liberated...
And Pakistan's flag would be hoisted there...
The whole of Kashmir was preparing for this.
Is it possible then that the Central Government,
and Kashmir's Government had no inkling about it?
Well, only they know whether they were aware of it or not...
But in January 1990 the Central Government appointed Jagmohan,
as Jammu and Kashmir's Governor.
Jagmohan reached Jammu on 19th January.
Due to extremely bad weather he could not reach Kashmir.
But Farooq Abdullah resigned on 18th January
and left for London immediately.
Left for London!
Amidst the flames of terrorism blazing through Kashmir
On 19th January 1990,
Kashmir was left without an administration,
without a State Leader.
This is unprecedented in India's history!
For lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits,
there is only one memory of 19th January 1990...
A never-ending dreadful and frightening night...
When altogether all at once,
a flood of terror stood in front of their homes.
19th January, which is a very big day in the history of,
Kashmiri Pandits, Kashmiri Hindus as you know.
My mother said on 19th January... it was my grandfather's birthday...
My grandparents, her father's birthday.
And my grandparents lived about,
15 minutes away from our house.
We were alone. My mother and I were in the house.
A curfew was imposed.
And my mother suddenly woke up on 19th and said,
"It's never happened that I have been in the town,
and I have not wished my father."
- There was some leniency in curfew. - Yes.
- Relief of some hours. - There was some relief.
She said, "We will go."
"Within this relief period we will go and come back."
My grandmother, I still remember, was standing outside.
When she saw us, she lit up...
"How did you guys come here?"
We said that the roads were desolate, but still we have come
because mummy wanted to wish.
We were in my grandfather's home at night.
We were sitting and watching a movie.
V. Shantaram's movie
'Teen Batti Do Raasta'
I still remember. I was at home with my parents.
My mom and my dad.
We were watching a movie.
'Teen Batti Char Raasta'.
I cannot remember the name exactly.
The movie was going on.
My mother went out to the bathroom.
If you know how old Kashmir homes used to be,
to get to the bathroom, you had to go out of the house,
go to the courtyard and then go to the restroom.
Okay.
Suddenly she screamed loudly... listen...
You know, she screamed
We thought she has fallen.
Our house was right next to the street.
There was a mosque there and we lived behind the mosque.
When we went out, she was standing there.
Suddenly there are blaring noises,
blaring sounds coming from all directions.
Blaring from all mosques. All mosques in Kashmir.
You cannot imagine it.
When there is a tornado, the noise that it makes,
that is the kind of noise we heard.
Things coming out from mosques...
Like the noise blaring, the screaming and shouting.
Same noise from every mosque.
How did it happen? Why did it happen?
Nobody could understand it.
From the mosque towers it was clearly stated...
Leave from here.
And such slogans were shouted,
which cannot even be share with you.
What was the slogan? Tell me in Kashmiri.
- Was it in Kashmiri or Urdu? - No. No.
- It was in Kashmiri and Urdu. - Yes.
What do we want here?
- The rule of Shariat. - Yes.
What do we want? Freedom.
What does freedom mean?
There is no God but Allah.
I opened the window.
And suddenly we can hear...
Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.
God is greatest.
I saw from the window thousands of people,
they are just moving around.
And they are saying this.
'Aaskis Pakistan, batav rostey batenien saan'(KASHMIRI)
Which means that we want Pakistan without the men,
- but with your women. - Yes.
What do we want? Pakistan.
Batav vagar batenien saan' (KASHMIRI)
We want Pakistan along with Kashmiri women.
Such slogans were shouted.
We were given three options.
I will say it in Kashmiri language.
They said, you know, either convert to Islam,
leave the land or die.
So, either you mix with us, mingle with us,
and become a part of us.
Or you leave or you die.
Who came on the streets? Kashmiri Pandits?
Muslims.
- No. Muslims. - Muslims came out?
Yes. They came on the street.
And they surrounded the places where Hindus lived.
They started pelting stones.
Go away, infidels. Infidels, leave our country and go.
Infidels. Infidels, leave our country.
We will go to Pakistan.
And will bring Kalashnikov.
Leave this place.
Or else convert.
- Leave your women here. - Leave your wives.
It was so scary.
We felt close to dying.
We felt that any moment now,
they will barge into our homes and kill us.
We are hearing all this and we are unable to understand.
We came inside and we bolted the door.
My grandfather was sleeping.
He woke up suddenly.
And he must have been half asleep.
And he said...
Have the Kabal loot gavave?
Which means that...
- Because he had seen the Kabali attack of 1947. - Yes. Yes.
When those irregular Pakistani militias had come.
And they had caused bloodshed.
He had those memories.
He goes and he gets two kitchen knives.
And then he goes upstairs in the attic and he gets an axe.
And he looks at me and my mother.
And he said, "If they come in, I will kill you first."
Oh, my God!
Few people show up at our door.
And they knocked the door...
And the first question they asked my dad is that...
You have a daughter. We want you to send her outside.
Right away my dad recognized all of them.
They were like, I think 5 or 6 guys.
Aren't you this person's son? Aren't you this person's son?
What do you want to do with your sister here?
So, they were a little perplexed.
They did not expect him to know them.
And they just fled from there.
And right after they left, they went to another house.
So, they sort of continued the same thing,
whosoever had girls and young kids and...
I think around 2 or 3 o'clock they left our vicinity.
And nobody was sleeping.
We sat there with fear that, you know, anything can happen.
It was the longest night!
A never-ending night...
- Even after 30 years. - Even after 30 years.
The same night...
Due to the posttraumatic stress disorder of that night,
we still hear the voices in our dreams.
The genocide of Kashmiri Hindus
that had started on the night on 19th January,
never stopped after that.
From the next day warnings and hit lists,
were put up on their homes.
Leave your home... Or else you will be killed.
If somebody were to ask me what is the most precious thing in my home...
Well...
What could I say?
My entire home!
My memories dwell in the smallest of things of my home.
My chair on which I would sit and put my children to sleep...
The window from where I would see
them going to school...
The table on which we would have our meals...
The sofa where my father read the newspaper for hours...
Or the wall where, our pictures of happy memories are hung...
The fragrance of my home...
My happiness, joys, and sorrows and my entire life dwells...
In each corner of my home.
What if i had to leave all of this behind and run in a moment?
- There was a gate in our courtyard. - Yes.
A notice was put up on the gate.
It was signed by JKLF. Commander for that.
- It was written... - By commander you mean Yasin Malik.
Yes. His organization.
It was very well-planned.
It was written that you must leave within 48 hours
Otherwise, you will find your dead bodies in your own house.
We used to get posters.
With the stamp of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
You are being warned to leave your home within 48 hours.
It was sent to many homes.
These advertisements were printed in newspapers.
- It happened in Baramulla. In Anantnag. - Yes. Yes.
- Sopore. - Yes. Yes. Everywhere.
- The same pattern everywhere. - So, this was a design.
- Yes. - And this was scripted.
And they just followed it to the tee.
Absolutely.
We would have early dinner.
So that we would not need to switch on the light.
We would sit inside with fear...
- In the dark. - Yes.
- Okay. - At the same place. At the same place only.
We would hear so many slogans coming from outside,
that we would feel scared.
Now we are going to die. Now we won't survive.
- We are going to die today. - Okay.
In this situation when we received a warning,
that you must leave within 36 hours.
Our entire family had to pack their entire lives in just two suitcases.
I did not know that they had put up a poster outside our home at night.
They knew that I am from Punjab.
And my in-laws are from Jammu.
If anybody comes from outside, we will kill them too...
You know the handcart...
I put my children in a handcart and I reached the tourist center secretly.
They had said they would kill them too.
When we sat in the truck, my father gave one knife to my sister.
And gave one knife to me.
And he said, "I am with you. There is no need to worry."
It is not that he was scaring his children.
"There is no need to worry. I am with you."
"If I am unable to save you on the way, then kill yourself."
Can you imagine what a father must have gone through,
while saying this to his children?
Which father would tell his children,
'take the knife and kill yourself'?
Is there any father in the world who would do that?
There is! Kashmiri Pandit!
Terrorists did not stop there.
They started barging into homes and attacking unarmed people.
They started abducting women and committing thefts.
Lakhs of Kashmiri Hindus started fleeing
from Kashmir at mid-night, filled into trucks like cattle.
Some fled for life carrying only one suitcase,
some fled barefoot,
some jumped from the third floor and limped away,
some ran from half burning homes,
some left for work and never got a chance to return home,
Some had to leave their loved ones and run.
Some had to leave the dead bodies of their loved ones,
and run for their lives...
They kept running and kept being targeted and killed too.
The cruelest part of this genocide is,
their merciless and painful killings.
Papa was kidnapped.
At that time, we were not there. My papa was alone in Anantnag.
Some militants kidnapped him.
The next day's newspaper mentioned,
Hizbul Mujahideen's name.
I did not even see his dead body.
Because we had not received the message by then.
He was tortured brutally.
The bones near his elbow were broken.
Over here. Both the elbows.
Three shots were fired.
One bullet hit his hand. Two bullets hit his chest.
They said that he was a police informer.
He used to pass on all information about us.
After that we shifted to Jammu in December '90...
We came this side and never returned to Kashmir again.
The confidence my grandfather had...
He was like, I have been in this place for years.
I have not done anything wrong that I can remember.
So, he was sitting on a big Chinar log.
And he had his friends on either side.
Both happened to be the local Muslims.
There were two teenage boys actually, that came on a motorcycle.
And they just shot him.
You know. Point blank.
I think 5-6 bullets.
In his head and chest, I would say.
And that was it...
On 10th August,
those days we did not have phones in Jammu,
we came to know somehow that my grandmother has died.
With God's grace we reached there somehow.
When we reached there, what did we see?
There were some finger marks on her neck.
The police were there.
Our women wear a kind of nuptial chain around their ears.
It was cut off and missing.
We inquired.
Our neighbors said that until 10:30 she was talking to them.
And in the morning, she just died.
We sent the body for postmortem.
But ultimately, we found out that,
two men barged into the house at night.
They shut her mouth and strangulated her to death.
This never leaves my heart...
I do not talk about this... Today I got a chance after a long time...
At least somewhere in the records it will be mentioned,
that there were such people whose names are not on any records,
who are dead and are now history.
They did not leave their faith Did not leave their village,
they did not leave their country.
And they died on Kashmir's soil.
There are such people!
My grandmother was one of them...
Our father was elderly at that time.
He was around 80 years old.
He was tortured very badly.
We do not know... We did not even get his dead body...
They said that they had nailed his legs...
Saying that he is an old man... Why to waste our bullets on him?
Kill him just like that.
On 8th October, my father was sitting there.
With my uncle.
His name was Mr. Zindalal Pandita.
He was also there.
A servant named Mohammad Akbar, who worked at our place,
came to call him,
'Mr. Jagannath, somebody is calling you.'
He knew who had come... My father and uncle went.
Unfortunately, both were...
There is a garden near our home...
They were hanged and killed there.
30 years ago, Kashmiri Hindus, Kashmiri Pandit ladies,
despite being pregnant were chopped into three pieces,
and hanged from the tree.
Can you just imagine?
You go crazy when you even say this.
What must have been the state of their parents, their husbands,
and their children...
When you see a lady like this...
You feel scared...
That a woman is raped in UP.
You feel scared that a woman is raped in Punjab. You feel scared...
a woman is raped in Delhi...
Can you imagine this?
There were unlimited rapes in Kashmir...
Which are unaccounted for.
There was no activist to speak about it.
What could we have said? About our plight in our own words?
We were helpless to say anything.
My sister's name was Girija Tickoo.
Girija Raina. Her in-laws' surname was Tickoo.
So Girija Tickoo.
She was a lab assistant in high school Trehgam.
In June she went to Trehgam high school for work.
On her way back...
Those days there was no traffic... Due to many strikes.
She spent the night at a neighbor's house in Tikkar.
She was kidnapped from there.
Her body was found in pieces near a bridge near Kupwara town.
On 24th June he was kidnapped from home.
The terrorists came there.
- Your father. - My father.
There is Sohara Medical Institute in Kashmir.
It is a top medical institute.
There is a road called Dr. Ali Jan Road.
His body was cut into pieces.
- Was he shot first? - He was shot.
His body was cut into pieces.
The pieces were put in a sack.
And both the sacks were dumped there.
My grandpa was alive at that time.
He was told that there are torture marks on the body.
So, it is better you tell his son and other family members,
to not see the body.
- So, you did not see your father's face? - I did not. I did not.
Although the postmortem stated,
strangulation as cause of death. Okay?
But Pyarelal Kaul, the writer who wrote the book,
mentioned very horrendous things which I cannot even explain.
He wrote that he was tortured inhumanly.
He was tortured with hot iron press.
Such marks were on his body.
Maybe his eyes were also damaged.
Some terrorists came into their home.
My aunt's brother came down.
They shot him first.
Then his wife came. What is going on?
She came down. They shot her.
Then my aunt came down.
They shot her.
Then my uncle came down. They shot him.
Oh, my God!
The whole, in a row...
And another son came down. They shot him too.
But he survived.
My uncle was an Assistant Executive Engineer,
in rural development.
And he was shot execution style.
There was a bullet here. There was a bullet entry.
And then, they took away all his, you know,
funds, whatever money.
He had gold. He had rings. Everything was gone.
After killing, body will be dumped in Jhelum.
So, they basically pushed him. But because of the grills there,
his leg, I think his one leg got stuck there.
His body was dangling there!
The body was dangling there...
I have also witnessed the genocide personally.
The genocide which remains unseen by all.
I have seen the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits' souls.
Those who have survived the loss of their dear ones,
their souls get wounded
with grief and pain every day.
My father had almost...
12-13 bullets shot into him.
Two other people were killed.
They also had 12-15 bullets.
Everybody ran away.
When I sit here or anywhere in the world... I wonder about my father...
He was lying there for 2-3 hours...
Did he die instantly? Or did he have to suffer?
What he must have done?
Did he grasp the soil with his hands?
What must have happened?
When I saw his body, there was blood everywhere.
My entire clothes...
They were drenched in it.
Because I hugged him, laying down on him...
Even today... when I wake up at night,
I can feel his weight...
I can feel that weight still on my arms.
I really can feel that weight.
I can feel that blood everywhere.
I just wanted to run away somewhere...
I didn't belong there.
We went inside. There was a big hall.
On the right side, on the ice, my father was lying there.
His body was covered.
But...
There was so much blood and fluid oozing out from there.
Everything was turning red.
My aunt would come and wipe it again and again.
His entire body was covered.
But only his face was visible.
There were many wound marks and bullet marks on it.
They took him to the corridor to bathe him.
That's when I saw him for the first time.
Nobody must have seen their father naked...
I have.
While they were bathing him.
There were bullet marks everywhere.
The worst part was there was a postmortem done.
Starting from somewhere here. All the way till there.
He wasn't even stitched properly after the postmortem, Pallaviji.
It was like this...
If I could explain...
It haunts me in my dream.
It was like this.
This is a stitch. This is a stitch. This is a stitch. Rest all...
If I had looked closely, I could have seen what's in there.
Nobody should see their loved one in this awful state,
not even their enemy.
The father whose smiling face I remembered always...
Now when I close my eyes, I remember this state of my father.
Maybe someday I will go to that place and see...
See what...
I can only pay homage to that place where he...
We have not shared the accounts of the rape victim women of the genocide, in order to maintain their dignity.
The estimated number of Kashmiri Pandits who were forced out of their homes in this genocide is between 4 - 5 lakhs.
The official figures state the number of deaths in 1990 Kashmiri Pandit genocide to be 219.
The data complied by Kashmiri Pandits states the estimated deaths to be 2000 and documented deaths to be 1608.