New Delhi, July 5 (IANS) Thirty-six years is a long time — long enough for hopes of justice to fade and tears of grief to dry. And when every door of justice and political will seemed firmly shut, one case has given an entire community reason to believe that justice, however delayed, may still be possible.

For the beleaguered Kashmiri Hindus, the chargesheet filed in the kidnapping and murder case of Sarla Bhat has rekindled long-lost hopes of justice and redemption. For more than three decades, the community has knocked on the doors of governments, the judiciary and even those who champion human rights. Nothing moved until the last week of June 2026, when investigators finally filed a chargesheet in the case.

Sarla Bhat’s is only one among hundreds of cases in which families long ago stopped expecting justice. Officially, there is no comprehensive record of the violence inflicted upon the Kashmiri Pandit community after terrorism erupted in the Valley in 1989. Many cases were never properly documented.

The local administration and the political establishment of the time, functioning under the shadow of terrorism and the pro-Pakistan separatist ecosystem, either failed to register cases or did not pursue them seriously. Even many human rights groups and sections of civil society remained silent as persecuted Hindus were left with little choice but to flee the Valley in the early 1990s.

According to community estimates, more than seven lakh Kashmiri Hindus were forced to leave their homes and become refugees in their own country.

A report compiled by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in 2008, based on its own records, stated that militants had killed 209 Kashmiri Pandits from 1989 onwards, including 109 in 1990 alone. Kashmiri Pandit organisations, however, maintain that the actual number could be closer to 700. In the absence of complete official records, the figures remain disputed. Many victim families chose to flee to protect their women and children rather than approach a police force they believed had become compromised during those years.

The uncertainty is not confined to the number of murders. There are no definitive records of kidnappings, rapes, gang rapes, arson, loot, extortion, illegal occupation of properties, land encroachments and desecration of temples. The violence unleashed on Kashmiri Pandits was brutal. Equally disturbing has been the manner in which, during the pre-Article 370 abrogation years, influential sections of the political and intellectual ecosystem appeared more inclined to look away than confront what had happened.

On February 2, 1990, young businessman Satish Tickoo was shot in the legs outside his residence in the Karfalli locality of Habba Kadal in Srinagar. JKLF terrorist Bitta Karate allegedly led the group that attacked the unarmed Tickoo. He was beaten, kicked and left bleeding as slogans were raised around him. He bled to death. The members of the local Muslim neighbourhood, according to accounts of the incident, did not come to his rescue.

It is pertinent to recall that in a media interview, Bitta Karate had claimed to have killed at least 20 Kashmiri Pandits, perhaps even “30-40”, in 1990 on the instructions of his handlers. He later retracted the statement, claiming the interview had been recorded under duress. Nothing moved after his much-televised ‘confession’.

Equally striking is the fact that Karate was granted bail after spending 16 years in jail. The court reportedly observed that the prosecution had shown little interest in pursuing the case, reflecting the lack of seriousness with which such cases were handled for years. Such was the ecosystem which has been consistently trying to whitewash the violence perpetrated on the Hindu minority in the Valley.

The cases of brutality are many, but at least a few have finally begun to move.

The first case from the 1989-90 killings to be reopened by the Government of India was that of Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, who was assassinated in 1989 by JKLF terrorists led by Yasin Malik. Justice Ganjoo had earlier sentenced JKLF terrorist Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged for the 1966 murder of a police officer.

There are many other cases which await justice — telecommunications engineer B.K. Ganjoo (pumped with bullets as he tried to hide in a drum); Girja Tickoo (her autopsy revealed that she was brutally gang-raped and tortured, and was alive when she was cut into two pieces with a carpenter’s saw, right through the middle of her body); Radio Kashmir Director Lassa Kaul, political leader Tika Lal Taploo, poet Sarwanand Premi and his son, among many others. The bodies of the Premi father-son duo were discovered hanging, bearing horrific signs of torture, including cigarette burns, broken limbs, and gouged eyes.

The stories of brutality are endless. For over three decades, Kashmiri Pandit organisations have consistently demanded a dedicated judicial commission to comprehensively investigate the targeted killings and the mass exodus of the community from the Kashmir Valley. No government has accepted that demand.

The Supreme Court, too, repeatedly declined requests for a fresh probe. In July 2017, it dismissed a public interest litigation seeking an investigation into the killings of Kashmiri Pandits and the prosecution of accused separatists, observing that it would be extremely difficult to collect evidence and conduct a meaningful investigation more than 27 years after the events.

Those repeated disappointments — in courts as well as governments, both in the erstwhile state and at the Centre — steadily eroded whatever hope the community still held.

That is why the chargesheet in the Sarla Bhat case carries significance beyond a single prosecution. It has reopened a window that many believed had been permanently sealed. Whether it ultimately leads to convictions remains to be seen, but for thousands of families who have waited for decades, it signals that the search for justice has not ended.

Thirty-six years is enough for memories to fade. But for those who lost parents, children, siblings, homes, temples and an entire way of life, those memories remain painfully alive.

The pain has travelled from one generation to the next. Having lived for decades as refugees in their own country, often with few voices willing to speak for them, Kashmiri Hindus see the Sarla Bhat case as more than just another criminal prosecution.

It offers a small but significant glimmer of hope that justice, however delayed, may finally begin to find its way. And perhaps, one day, it may also bring them closer to returning to Kashmir — their native land, believed to have emerged from the ancient Satisar Lake through the efforts of Sage Kashyapa.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

–IANS

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