‘Indian pellet guns killed my Pinti’

The 21-year-old had gone to submit her assignment to the university when pellet wounds took her life

On September 21, after having my morning tea I went to a friend, Noorul Hassan’s home as his younger sister had got married a day before. As I opened the gate I saw two young men disassembling the tent which was erected on the lawn to accommodate the guests, three days ago. I joined them too. Meanwhile Hassan’s brother-in-law, Mudasir Ahmed came and told him, ‘let’s go.’ The two had to go to Tral – a town situated at a distance of 45 kilometres south of Srinagar and three-and-a-half kilometres from Hassan’s house in Batagund village - for some work.

Pinti's father hugging a Muslim man. PHOTO: IRFAN MALIK

“There is a lot of work to do so don’t leave before I come back. I will be back in just a couple of hours,” Hassan insisted before leaving.

I went inside the house to see if there was anything for me to do. Hardly 15 minutes had passed, both Hassan and Ahmed were back.

“Today, we survived miraculously,” said Hassan with short breaths.

“There was indiscriminate firing at the Tral bus stand. Had we not moved forward and taken a U-turn, anything could have happened. We could have even died,” he said without knowing what exactly had happened.

Within no time, the police version came that militants had targeted a senior Jammu and Kashmir minister and People’s Democratic Party leader Naeem Akhtar’s cavalcade with a grenade. Akhtar was in the town to inaugurate some development projects.

The grenade attack was followed by a volley of pellets and bullets fired by the Indian security forces injuring over 30 people. Two people including a young Sikh girl also lost their lives.



“I wonder why they chose this day (1st Muharram) to repeat Karbala,” Akhtar said while talking to media at the deputy superintend of police’s office in Tral.

“For ages, Tral has been unable to cherish the fruits of development and we in the government wanted to change this scenario by taking up various projects. Our work received a fillip during the last few months as the areas were relatively peaceful,” the minister said.

“Unfortunately, the incidents of violence are only aimed at reversing the development process which we have initiated in the area,” the minister added.

As the images of the dead and injured started pouring in on social media, one picture caught my attention. It was the picture of a 21-year-old Ratendeep Kour, who had died in the incident. I looked at the picture, again and again, zoomed it in and out. I was trying to befool my eyes that it was not Pinti, which we lovingly used to call her. But every gaze at the picture took me close to the reality that it is no other than a person who met me only four days ago at the same bus stand, just a few yards away from where the grenade was hurled on Akhter’s convoy.

Pinti's father. PHOTO: IRFAN MALIK

I had known this girl for almost eight years. We had met countless times at the same bus stand, had exchanged greetings and sometimes shared a seat in a bus which used to pass through my village before it completes its journey in her village, Chatergam – located at a distance of two kilometres from my house.

Kaur, who was pursuing her Master’s in Business Administration at the Islamic University of Science and Technology, had gone to submit her assignment to the university. Before leaving her home in the morning, she had a little conversation with her 62-year-old father, Ishpal Singh.

“Papa, I’m not going to eat anything this time. I’m going to the university and will submit my assignment. I’ve my paper tomorrow and have to prepare for that as well.



“I’m leaving Papa. I will be back within few hours and will have lunch together,” with tears rolling down his cheeks, Ishpal Singh narrated the last conversation he had with his youngest among the four daughters.

Sagandeer Kour, Pinti’s sister broke the news of her sudden death to him. Sagandeer, who works as an intern in Sub-District Hospital Tral, was present in the hospital when the injured were brought in.

“I had taken my second daughter to a clinic, close to the bus stand, for X-ray. Sagandeer was worried upon seeing the injured people in the hospital. She called me and asked if we were fine. She dropped the line, once I assured her that we had reached home before the incident happened,” said Singh.

“However, minutes later she called again. This time instead of hello, I heard Sagandeer’s wails. I asked her what had happened.  She replied that Pinti was dead and her sister's body was in front of her in the hospital,” Singh told me while wiping his tears.

Pinti died a day before she was to appear in the fourth paper of her second-semester examination.

PHOTO: REUTERS

Her death left the entire southern town in deep shock. Hundreds of people including Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus visited Chatrigam village to express solidarity with the bereaved family. The town remained shut the next day. All the businesses and government offices remained closed; traffic was off the roads, as people demanded an impartial probe into the incident.

“Pinti was not only Ishpal ji’s daughter. She was the daughter of Tral. Her death is a great loss to our town,"said Farooq Ahmed Tral, a civil society member at Singh’s residence.“We demand an impartial and time-bound inquiry into the incident.”

The Joint Resistance leadership (JRL) comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik expressed their deep shock and grief over the loss of precious lives and the injuries to over 30 people in this attack.



“The rampant construction of camps and bunkers by Indian forces in the densely populated areas of every nook and corner of the war-torn state has made lives of innocent people miserable and vulnerable,” they said in a joint statement.

Who hurled the grenade on Akhtar’s cavalcade remains a mystery? Nevertheless, for Ishpal Singh and his family, it is clear that his daughter did not die of grenade splinters but by the pellets fired by the Indian forces.

“When we were giving the last bathe to Pinti, there were hundreds of pellet marks on her body. It pierced our hearts. It is clear to us that she died of pellets,” said Pinti’s uncle, SS Bali.

“A CBI inquiry must be ordered into the incident,” he added.

Life is extremely uncertain in the Himalayan region. You leave in the morning from your home but you never know whether you will be able to get back home alive or not as the decades-long conflict has already claimed hundreds and thousands of lives in Kashmir. What the future holds for Kashmiris is also unknown.

 

Bilal Kuchay is a freelance journalist, who has been featured in Kindle Magazine, Himal Southasian and The Kashmir Monitor.