The brief encounter at Bamdoora that triggered massive reaction from south and paralyzed Kashmir for many days has created havoc with scores of lives, reports Aakash Hassan
On July 8, 2016, Islamabad’s six cousins had planned a picnic. They booked a Kokernag hut and were keen to have some fresh air for the next three days.
“It was 8:30 pm and we were three miles short of Kokernag when we saw people gathering on the road,” Aaqib Ayoub, a medicine student, said. “When we were refueling the car, people asked as to move away swiftly.”
As they probed, they felt shocked that the belt was in mourning over the killing of Burhan. Caught in a catch-22 situation, they wanted to drive back home. “But it was impossible,” Ayoub said. “People had started arriving in town in cars, trucks and bikes. The road that we had just covered by jam-packed.”
They went straight to the hut they had booked and felt sheltered and slightly secure. But that was short-lived. Soon, clashes took-over Kokernag as stone-pelting youth hit the streets with police station as target.
“We panicked a lot but we had no option,” Ayoub said. “Tensions escalate when angry men attacked the CRPF camp and other government structures. The rains at midnight enforced some calm but at it stopped the youth were back to attack the camp, for the eighth time slightly past midnight.” At around 1 am Kokernag felt sleepy and calm.
Earlier that day sleepy Bamdoora, barely five miles from town, had witnessed a major action in the afternoon. The entire belt felt in a sudden cordon. Soldiers from 19 RR had moved swiftly from their Larkipora garrison taking the Zaldora link road and surrounded a patch of Bamdoora. Cops from SOG Islamabad, Kokernag and Srinagar accompanied them.
The 150-household village near the Haji Ded Ball, the hillock named after a women saint Haji Ded, had not witnessed any militancy related incident for a long time. Surprised over lot of security men around, locals were told that Chief Minister was visiting the area.
Then the soldiers slightly inched towards the house of Farooq Ahmad Wani, a forest department employee, and sealed it off. Congested, the house is surrounded by many others. Though it has a rare side passage, it was blocked. In fact, soldiers had climbed up the cell phone tower overlooking the surrounded house and taken an aerial study.
Only then Wani was summoned out and asked about the people at his residence. “My four daughters,” he told them. He was sent back in and asked to re-check. Inside were “guests” – his nephew Sartaj and his two aides. Wani’s niece, living nearby, said Farooq informed his “guests” about the cordon. “They were having tea at that time,” she said.
Sartaj, his nephew, picked his rifle and asked his two companions to “leave”. He wanted to engage the soldiers. But stepping barely out of the main door, bullets hit him. His two colleagues managed to move only couple of yards but fell in the trap.
The house, before it was set afire later, indicated a slight gunfight. There were bullet marks only on the main door of the house. All the houses belonging to Wani and his six brothers were set afire by mobs later last week. They also axed a major apple orchard that was a model for the new high-density plantations set by a Shopian entrepreneur Khurram Shafi Mir.
Locals said the entire thing lasted less than 15 minutes. Farooq’s four daughters were inside the house. As they found the three bleeding and dead, they started crying in mourning. When the soldiers started removing them, Bilquis, one of Sartaj’s cousins, her cousin said, came out and held collar of a soldier in protest. Well before the villagers could understand the happenings, soldiers had taken the bodies in the truck and rushed to the police station in Kokernag.
Sartaj and his two guests had arrived in Bamdoora on Thursday, the second Eid. They put up one of his seven Mamas (maternal uncles) and were supposed to leave on Friday evening to have dinner at his home in the sleepy hamlet of Sheikh Taqiya, barely a 15-minute walk through paddy fields and a dense sloppy walnut garden. His parents Munawar Sheikh and Nigeena and his two sisters had cooked sumptuous food for them.
It was a long awaited homecoming of Sartaj, who joined militancy in 2000 when he was in Class 10 of state run High Sachool at Sagam. He crossed over and returned a trained fighter and, according to his relatives, was injured in a gunfight as well. Finally, he was arrested in 2009 at Deatho, Achabal and spent nearly 18 months in various jails. Once he walked free, he gave up militancy, became a hosiery salesman in Islamabad’s Cheeni Chowk.
“I would often ask him how he used to work as militant with such an innocent face,” one of his classmates said. “He was a shy boy who felt victim to a wave. Even I was interrogated number of times when he left home.”
Sartaj failed to cope-up with his new life. Erstwhile militants live a different life and he was not an exception. In 2014 he went missing again. A week after he conveyed his family that he had returned to the ranks. Then pictures surfaced showing him in Burhan’s company.
A day later when the entire attention was focused on Tral, tens of thousands of people had assembled between Hillar Bahie and Sheikh Taqya for Sartaj’s funeral prayers. In the vast Eidgah of Hiller, funeral prayers were offered amid showers of sweets and almonds on his coffin and slogans – Saane Shaheedho Tresh Mah Lajiyoo (hey our martyr, do you feel thirsty). For the huge funeral procession, it took two hours to get the coffin to the grave. Before he was lowered, there was another quick Jinaza for those who missed the main one.
In the entire belt Sartaj was unknown. He lacked any known reason to be popularly known. But as Burhan aide, the same belt gave him a king-size send-off.
Ayoub felt caged in the Kokernag hut. On Saturday, a few hours before Sartaj was buried, he witnessed a woman procession shouting Azaadi slogans in front of the CRPF camp. Then CRPF retaliated.
Bindoo locality in upper Kokernag was their first target. They entered the locality and vandalized everything – from window panes in home to car windshields. This added fuel to fire. Clashes broke out, it was sound of bullets and thuds of tear-smoke shells. In reaction, youth attacked police station, later many other government buildings and eventually the home of local lawmaker.
The entire belt was boiling. Around 15 kms down, in Achabal, situation was pretty ugly. People set the police station afire. Witnesses alleged that locals assembled in the main Chowk and marched towards the police station. As some youth resorted to brick-bating targeting the police station, a cop was recording a video. This added to the anger and pushed the situation to a level that police fired on the mob.
Abdul Haseeb Ganie was the first hit. A student of 12th grade, Haseeb was running a shop at Brinity Dialgam. Immediately, he was shifted to Islamabad hospital where from he was referred to Srinagar but he died midway.
“Haseeb and me were standing in an alley and watching stone pelting,” his younger brother said.” Suddenly I found my brother bleeding.” Two more boys were hit, one each from Khandru and Magray Pora.
Locals said they identified the cop from the police station bunker who showered bullets on them. Within minutes the protestors went to his village in Gopalpora and set his house afire.
Within a span of few hours, entire South Kashmir was burning. The district hospital in Islamabad still has two wards full of people injured by bullets, pellets and shells. It received 123 injured of whom 19 were referred in serious condition to Srinagar. While eight people died in the hospital or were brought dead, the hospital conducted 26 major surgeries.
Ashiq Ahmad, 24, from the highway village of Kelam, Mirbazar (Kulgam) was part of a procession towards the nearby army camp. Army tried to stop them and it triggered a clash and the fire was opened. A bullet hit Ashiq in abdomen. Unconscious, he was shifted to Islamabad.
“Had the bullet pierced one millimeter more he wouldn’t have survived,” the doctor who carried out his surgery said.
Salman Ahmad Malla is a tenth standard student from Kelam. When Malla was hit nobody was there to take him to hospital. Shabir, his elder brother, drove him to PHC on a bike and later to Islamabad. His stomach was perforated.
Saeem Ahmad is 15 and is shouting Mea Chatetav Khoor, Khudayoo (God, somebody cut my foot please). He has received three bullets in his left leg just slightly upper of his ankle. Doctors who have conducted multiple surgeries on him say he will remain disabled now. Saeem was hit by bullets while pelting stones at Wanpoh Chowk.
There are various women recapitulating in the hospital.
Masooda is 45 and mother of four daughters. Wife of an auto driver Farooq, this Ashajipora resident was hit by a bullet and pellets when her husband and two daughters were taking her to hospital.
“As we were walking through lanes just few meters away from our home, a police party came in front of us,” Masooda said. “As we started turning back, I felt killing sensation in my back with the sound of a gunshot.”
Finding nothing around, her husband somehow got a Reada, the hand-pushed 3-wheel cart, and started pushing it towards the hospital. The cops, however, caught and beat him. An injured Farooq was freed only after their two daughters cried aloud.
Not far away from her is a 35-year-old wailing woman from Batengoo. Her 14-year-old son, Saahil is undergoing a surgery. “CRPF men barged into our residence and started beating him,” she said. “By the time I and my husband rescued him, his arm was fractured.”
Some of the women were hit when saving their male members.
Sara Begum is 70-year-old frail lady from Gooriwan (Bejbehara). Allegedly beaten by a police officer she has 13 stitches on her body with a fractured leg.
“A police party barged in our house breaking the main gate and started beating my elder son while asking for my younger one,” Sara said. “Seeing my son being beaten ruthlessly, I put my body on him. But they didn’t spare even me. They all started kicking me mercilessly for fifteen minutes.” A rare survivor, she had received six bullets in 1993 massacre when forces had fired on protesters in Bijbehara town.
Saba is 18-year-old girl from Garvesh Gam, Vessu (Qaigund). She and her sisters stood outside main door of her house when soldiers from nearby camp came to take away their father and brother.
“Some youth from nearby villages had pelted stones on army. They were unable to catch them but they turned up in the evening and tried to enter in our houses,” Saba said. “They wanted to take my father and brother so they beat me to the pulp while guarding the gate but we didn’t let them in.”
She suffered multiple fractures in her right leg.
“We were ready to face tough time, but to this extent was unexpected,” said Dr Malik Aazad Hussain, surgeon specialist. “We got the first casualty on 11:30 pm from Siligam Mattan.”
Aazad, who worked in the same hospital in 2010 conducted more than 20 surgeries in first five days. “This time the wounds were more violent. We received injured with wounds mostly in abdomen and chest area,” Aazad said. “These injuries take fatality higher.”
Even as wards are thinning, the costs are visible: five injured still admitted have lost their vision in either one or both eyes; six others have spinal cords damaged and will survive crippled.
