What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
On a petition seeking an SIT probe into the 1990 massacre of Kashmiri Pandits & their rehabilitation, the Supreme Court on Friday granted liberty to the petitioner to make a representation to appropriate authorities.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and CT Ravikumar disposed of the petition as withdrawn filed by non-profit ‘We the Citizens’.
“The court has asked the petition to make a representation to the Central government. They can approach the court again if not satisfied with the government response,” advocate Barun Kumar Sinha, who appeared before the court, told The New Indian.
The petition sought the court’s direction to the government of India and the government of Jammu and Kashmir to constitute an SIT to identify the perpetrators who were involved in, aided and abated the genocide of Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir between 1989 and 2003.
Submitting that hundreds of FIRs of the murder of Kashmiri Pandits have not been taken to their logical conclusion even after 30 years, the petition prayed that the accused be prosecuted based on a report prepared by the SIT.
It also sought the apex court directives to the authorities concerned to declare all the sale of immovable properties after the exodus of Kashmir Pandits from the Valley after 1990 as null and void.
The petitioner also prayed for a census of Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu and Kashmir, who have been victims/survivors of the genocide and are currently living in different parts of India.
The Centre and Jammu and the Kashmir government be directed to “rehabilitate/resettle the Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs including those who have migrated after the exodus in 1990”, the petition reads.
More than 3,50,000 Kashmiri Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities were forced to leave the Kashmir valley due to genocide and the subsequent exodus forced them to abandon or forcefully sell/dispose of their religious, residential, agricultural, commercial, institutional, educational properties for a paltry sum, it said.
Arguing that the 1989-90 genocide and the subsequent exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was “actually seventh one”, the petitioner said that the murders of prominent Hindu figures were an attempt to establish Islamic State in Jammu & Kashmir and make it secede from India.
“Genocide and subsequent Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs cannot be seen just as an incident of Ethnic Cleansing,” it argued.
