June 29, 2026(Monday), the State Investigation Agency (SIA) filed a 737-page charge-sheet before the Court of the Additional Sessions Judge (TADA/POTA), designated as Special Judge under the National Investigation Agency Act 2008, in Srinagar in the case of Sarla Bhat who was abducted, raped, tortured and killed in 1990 in Kashmir. Under the orders of the Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police, the investigation was transferred to the SIA on March 18, 2024. The chargesheet named five accused: Mohd. Yasin Malik, Khurshid Ahmad Chalkoo, Abdul Hamid Sheikh, Mohammad Yousuf Sofi (also known as Idrees) and Ghulam Mohammad Taploo.
The SIA described Yasin Malik, who was the then ‘chief commander’ of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a frontal terrorist organisation, as the principal conspirator and said that he directed the other accused to abduct and kill a Kashmiri Hindu young lady nurse Sarla Bhat. Chalkoo stands identified in the chargesheet as the gunman. Sheikh, Sofi and Taploo are already dead (before the charge-sheet was filed).
Yasin Malik is in jail in a separate case, while Chalkoo is absconding and is believed by investigators to have crossed over to Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK). Proclamation proceedings were earlier initiated against Chalkoo. Malik has a number of cases against him including the gruesome murder of IAF personnel in Srinagar and the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of Mufti Sayeed. Only some years back, Rubaiya Sayeed identified Yasin Malik in the designated court as one of her kidnappers in 1989.
Killings of Hindus in the Kashmir valley through terror activities can’t be termed as only selective killings. These were part of a bigger design to evict Hindus from the valley. This has been stated by the SIA in its charge-sheet as well. Sarla Bhat’s is a classic case of the heinous acts that were committed against the poor Kashmiri Pandit women because they were Hindus. Girja Tikoo, Prana Ganjoo-Baramulla, Sheela Tickoo, Devi, Durga Kaul, Prana Ganjoo-Srinagar and similar other Hindu women were forced to suffer the unimaginable; and that sent shock waves through the spine of the resistance of the Kashmiri Pandit community against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in Kashmir.
The acts like the killings and torture of Hindus, brutal rape and murder of women and the persistent slogans through the mosques and also on the streets of the valley paved way for the extermination of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley. In fact, the road of exodus was shown to the Pandits by their own Muslim friends, neighbours, colleagues and other acquaintances who brought various means of transport to them to pack and leave Kashmir. There is not even a single instance to suggest that any Hindu family was stopped by the local Muslim majority community from leaving Kashmir valley during 1989-90 forced mass-exodus and ethnic cleansing.
The ideological base for what was done in 1989-90 was actually laid in 1931 when the then Muslim Conference in the garb of demonstrations against the then Maharaja organised planned attacks on the minority community in the Kashmir valley killing 11 Hindus besides looting and burning their properties. The developments of 1947, 1967 and thereafter suggesting refusal to co-existence in Kashmir ignited the hatred towards the Kashmiri Pandits further. In 1946, in a public rally in Tengpora-Baramulla, Sheikh Abdullah asked his followers in the rally that their aim was to evict Hindus from the valley. This is contained in the files of the then political department of the government of Jammu and Kashmir and is on record.
The loot, destruction and burning of Hindu temples and shrines in the Kashmir valley and attack on their properties in 1986 was just a trailer in regard to the events to come. Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front was the first among many terror organisations to kill Hindus selectively, abduct women, rape and torture them and leave their dead bodies to vultures. This terror outfit made it sure that the valley was ethnically cleansed of minority Hindus and inflicted genocide to achieve their target. Terrorism and fear-psychosis were their powerful and effective instruments to exterminate Kashmir Pandit community -the indigenous people of the valley who established civilization in Kashmir thousands of years ago.
In a prominent case of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir valley, this author along with his other colleagues was instrumental in filing a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in March 1994. The Commission’s court after due deliberations, argumentation and thorough investigation after listening to the counsels of the complainants, state government and the central government passed its orders in June 1999. The orders issued by the NHRC court under the chairmanship of Justice Venkatachalliah said categorically that the ‘Commission was constrained to say that acts akin to genocide were committed against the Kashmir Pandit community in Kashmir’…..and ‘a genocide type design may exist against them in the minds and utterances of the terrorists and militants in the valley’.
It didn’t stop there and said further that the Kashmiri Pandits were not given the ‘due understanding and relief that they deserved’. The Hindustan Times editorially called the Pandits the ‘victims of the State too’. The Delhi High Court in a different judgement described the extermination of Pandits as ethnic cleansing. Only a few years ago, the Home Secretary of India termed the happenings against the Pandits as genocide. The J&K High court in another judgement said that the migration of the Kashmiri Pandits can’t be compared with any other migration as it was unparalleled and exclusive.
The governments failed to take appropriate steps after these pronouncements by the judicial and quasi-judicial establishments. What required to be done thirty years ago was allowed to fade away by everyone who mattered constitutionally, politically and administratively. The Supreme Court of India in a brazen judgement on a petition regarding the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits said that the issue was time-barred and the court couldn’t do anything. However, the same apex court in the case of genocide of Sikhs opened the files dated back to 1984. Human rights bodies maintained mum and the state actually remained tactically silent.
The brutality of the heinous acts didn’t move the people in any manner. ‘Yasin Malik’s men didn’t stop at raping the 27-year-old Kashmiri Hindu nurse Sarla Bhat. They then murdered her, engraved the acronym ‘JKLF’ on her body, and mutilated it out of sheer contempt for her Hindu identity. After that, they issued multiple warnings to her family against cremating her remains according to Hindu rituals. The family still went ahead with the cremation, defying the threats. When they went to collect her cremated remains (asthi) later, a mob of around 200 Islamists descended upon the crematorium and stomped over them. They didn’t stop even at that. They then bombed her family home with a grenade’, said one of the closest family members.
There are numerous such stories that need to be opened which the people in the government till date wanted to bury for all the times to come. There are some pertinent questions which require answers. Rubaiya Sayeed who was kidnapped in December 1989 identified Yasin Malik as her abductor 33 years after the event in a court. Why was she silent for more than three decades! She must have revealed the identity of the kidnappers to her family as well which included Mufti Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti. Both of them remained the chief ministers of the state for a pretty good time and Mufti Sayeed was the Home Minister of India for almost a year. What compulsions had they not to take action against Yasin Malik and his terror outfit.
The political establishment and the then old bureaucracy right from the days of V.P.Singh and Mufti Sayeed tried every attempt to name the forced mass-exodus of the Pandits as ‘migration’ and term the displaced people of the genocide as ‘migrants’. They didn’t allow it calling as genocide officially under the pretext that it would eventually invite ‘international interference’. They also made it sure that the displaced people of the valley should be allowed to get dispersed throughout the length and breadth of the country so that their voice is not heard as the voice of the ethnically-cleansed community. All doors for a possible return to the valley for them were shut or burnt or destroyed with the connivance of the government.
Then Yasin Malik was made a ‘youth icon’ and a ‘symbol of peace’ on every media channel and print platforms. There were people in the government, close to the government and also close to the politicians in India and Pakistan who took him to the office of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The world saw the Indian Prime Minister, Mammohan Singh shaking hands and discussing issues with a dreaded terrorist at the PM’s office. This was a brutal defiance of India’s known policy of zero-tolerance against terrorism and in contravention of the sentiments of the families of those who were killed by Malik and his outfit.
Now we have a test case and this government at the centre has to prove that it won’t allow the legacy of the bad times and wrong policies to overburden itself. In all cases, in regard to the Kashmiri Hindu community, justice delayed is surely justice denied. This one case and all similar cases need a ‘special crimes tribunal’ for which a demand was made umpteen times by the displaced community of Kashmir. It is time for the government to have a fresh look into this whole issue and declare the displaced community as a victim of genocide in Kashmir followed by setting up a Special Crimes Tribunal in Jammu and Kashmir to go into the all events right from February 1986 in this connection….!
