All the militants escaped but the gun battle left behind razed homes and painful memories. Saqib Mir spent a day with the residents in restive Khudwani to understand firsthand the difference between the new militancy and the old counter-insurgency
On April 10, Bilal Ahmad Dar, a resident of Wani Mohallah in Kulgam’s Khudwani belt dined with his wife and two daughters. Before the family would retire for the night, there was a knock at their at around 11 pm. It saw Dar’s nephew, living next door, informing him that the village stand besieged by the army and police. The troops have asked for keeping doors open for a home search by them.
After delivering the message, the young teenager, left and returned home that was already in cordon. Dars’ were panicky and planned to move out of their house.
Before they would move out, soldiers in full battle gear entered the house. Fear stricken, Dar told them to search the house but allow his small family to move out. It infuriated the gunmen. “Keep quite or I shoot you,” one soldier put the barrel of his gun on Dar’s chest and said. “Everything is fare in war.”
The family was locked in a ground floor room. As the soldiers went upstairs, the first gunshot was fired. With this, electricity was off and it was pitched dark.
Dar pushed his family to a corner and asked them to duck down. Throughout the night, the family was in that dark corner weeping and consoling each other. The kids would scream with every blast and bang as the impact shatter the window panes of their room.
Kids wanted water and it was not around. He wanted to pee and there was nothing other than the Kangri, the fire-pot. “It felt as if those were the last moments of our life,” Dar said, and burst into tears.
Dars’ did not know that several other families in the neighbourhood including his brother were in the same state. He did not know the soldiers had left quite early. It was after sunrise that his brother, after pleading the soldiers to permit his brother’s family out, approached him. Dar did not know his house was on fire. Dar’s brother had detected the flames and risked his life and took the family out. When Dar understood that he was jailed in his own house with his family and it was on fire, he fainted.
At a stones through from Dars’, is located a three storied newly constructed house of Abdul Lateef Wani. That family was also locked in a basement room. During wee hours, Wani and his younger daughter Suha Lateef, 11, studying in fifth primary, were taken by the army men. They were not taken out of the house but upstairs in their own house.
“Upstairs, I was shocked when the soldiers ordered my daughter to open all the windows of a room,” Lateef said. “They wanted windows open so that they take comfortable positions. They did not open the windows because they feared that they will be shot at by the militants. They used my daughter as a human shield.”
How did the little girl manage it? “Before opening every window, I would first cough deliberately so that the militants would recognize that I am a civilian,” Suha said.
As the gun battle raged for 18 hours, four civilian and a soldier were killed. Three homes were destroyed. All the militants escaped.
Locals said of the four civilians, three were killed when they were protesting near the encounter site. The fourth was killed when he was in the premises of his friend’s house.
Sheikh Sarjeel Hameed, 26, was one of the four civilians. A local resident, Sarjeel, according to his family, was in his friend’s house, barely half a kilometre away from the encounter site. On April 11, morning, Sarjeel told his friend that he will go to washroom which stands in the premises of the house.
“As Sarjeel was returning from the washroom, he was shot by the forces without any reason,” Sarjeel’s mother Nabiza Begum alleged. “As we were trying to go near Sarjeel’s body which was lying in a pool of blood, we were unable to reach there because the forces were firing in our direction,” Sarjeel’s friend’s family added.
The witnesses have a graphic detail. When Sarjeel felt he had received bullet in his abdomen, he took off his T-shirt and wrapped that around the wound. Then the body of Sarjeel was evacuated from the premises and shifted to District Hospital Islamabad where he was declared brought dead by the doctors. After bringing the corpse, it was disallowed home because forces said encounter was still going on. People carried the body to his uncle’s house in a nearby Naibasti.
“We could not see the corpse of our son throughout the day as our village was under siege and forces did not allow us to move to Naibasti village, despite pleading for the passage,” Nabiza said. “It was in the dusk, the time when the encounter ended that we were able to see Sarjeel dead.”
Sarjeel was a truck driver. His father Abdul Hameed Sheikh was also a driver but could not continue his profession as his leg was badly injured in an accident. Sarjeel’s brother Nadeem is also a driver. Tragically, Sarjeel was readying to be going as a groom to Saller on May 7, and bring Mahjabeena, his bride. But fate had decided otherwise. His young fiancée drove to his home and bid him adieu forever.
In Hovur-Mishpur, Bilal Ahmad Tantray, 17, was living with his Mamu, the maternal uncle, who brought him up. Basically hailing from Kujur, Redwani, he has four brothers living with his parents.
Before April 11, Tantray had gone with his friends to purchase his uniform. He was going to take admission for his 12th class in nearby Qaimoh. But he fell to the bullets.
That fateful day, Tantray left his maternal home and accompanied his friends and went to join the protests near the encounter site.
“After sometime when Bilal had left, a biker informed me that he was hit by the bullet in his chest and he is lying on the road near the Khudwani bridge in a pool of blood and his face has turned pale,” Mohammad Shafi Lone, his Mamu said. Before Lone would reach, Bilal had died. Though the locals had assembled and tried taking him to the hospital but the injury in chest had led to his quick death.
About 7-km away, lived Aijaz Ahmad Pala in Tulkhun, near Bijbehara. Pala 27, was a Ghar-Jamahee, the son-in-law who lives with in-laws.
Basically, a resident of Batpura, Khudwani, he has two brothers and two sisters living with his parents. Pala, a carpenter, was married to Lolly Jan some eight years back but the couple was childless. He was locally known as Sachin Tendulkar for his cricketing capacity.
On April 11, Pala left home to work in a house in a nearby village. Witnesses said he was walking in when the protests were going on near the encounter site and he was killed after he received a bullet in his head.
“He was like my own son,” Saja Begum, his mother-in-law said. “He worked hard and built a new house for us. He was the sole breadwinner of our family but unfortunately he left us.” Tragically, he could spend only 25 days of his life in his new home.
Almost 8 kms away, is the home of Fazil Fayaz Alai in Melhoor Alaipura ( Shopian). Alai, 13, was living with his parents, three sisters and a brother. His father Gulam Mohammad Alai is a labourer.
On April 11, Alai woke up early in the morning, took a bath and went to a mosque for Fajr prayers.
Gulam Mohammad remembers the short, usual conversation that went between him and his son that morning. When the breakfast was over Alai and his elder brother Umar started preparing for the school. The brothers put on their uniform, lifted their bags and left for the school but the brothers returned with half an hour saying that because of an encounter, the school is closed.
“At home, my son gathered all of his books including the old ones and put that in his school bag and kept the bag in front of me and told me: Mummy, I’m going towards the encounter site, so keep tarpaulin laid in the premises for the mourners because I’m going to die as a martyr today,” Alai’s mother Haneefa said, while weeping aloud.
In school uniform, Alai left the house with his brother and other boys and started walking towards the encounter site. His brother remembers that Alai on the way took a skull cap from his friend put that on his own head and then would shout: “Today, I’m going to die as a martyr.”
“When we reached near the encounter site where the protests were going on, after some time a teargas shell hit my right shoulder and I left the spot,” Umar Alai said. “Soon I left the spot and some boys came running towards me and said that bullets had pierced my brothers head and neck and he has being shifted to sub district hospital Bijbehara.” By the time he reached the hospital, he was already dead.
