SRINAGAR: A gathering of Kashmiri Pandits on Sunday paid homage to their kin who were brutally killed by terrorists at Nadimarg village in Jammu and Kashmirโs Pulwama district in 2003.
While the community has been commemorating the 24 victims annually in Jammu, this was the first time the remembrance event took place at the site of the tragedy.
On the night of March 22-23, terrorists disguised in military fatigues surrounded Nadimarg, forced residents out of their homes, and executed them in an open field.
Bhushan Lal Bhat, a former resident who relocated to Jammu, shared that this year, the community chose to return to their native village for the ceremony.
โWe have been holding the event in Jammu every year, but this time, we decided to gather at Nadimarg. The abandoned houses here speak for themselves about the horrors of that night,โ he said.
Many children joined the gathering alongside men and women, a symbolic effort to connect the younger generation with their ancestral roots.
In the early 1990s, amid escalating terrorism in Kashmir, most Kashmiri Pandits from Nadimarg fled to relief camps across Jammu as part of the larger exodus that began in February 1990.
The chilling attack, which took place between 11 p.m. and midnight, claimed the lives of 11 men, 11 women, and two young boysโranging from a 65-year-old man to a two-year-old child.
The perpetrators, linked to the globally banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, were led by their โdistrict commanderโ Zia Mustafa, believed to be from Rawalakot in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Arrested in 2003, Mustafa was imprisoned until October 2021, when security forces took him to a forest in Poonch to locate terrorist hideouts. He was reportedly killed in an exchange of fire during the operation.
