Irshad Hussain
Four days after the Border Security Forces personnel killed 52 persons in the Gawkadal area of Srinagar on January 21, 1990, the word of this first massacre spread into the nooks and corners of the Kashmir valley. A word of mouth spread that Jagmohan, the Governer had licensed people to kill at will, As the word reached Handwara, people gathered on bakery shops as the trooper movement heightened in the North Kashmir area.
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On a Thursday morning, Ghulam Mohammed Khan, remembers, anguished over the Gaw Kadal massacre people gathered shouting slogans against the BSF men who were deployed in large numbers in the area. Soon the crowd changed into a procession which started marching ahead shouting pro Freedom slogans. Marching through lanes and streets of the Handwara township, the procession marched ahead towards the Handwara Square.
Throughout the procession, the whole town was in a mourning over the devastating news from Srinagar. People who were a part of the procession spoke of the details that kept coming through newspapers for the next many days. “It is all a plan of Jagmohan, they want to kill all Muslims here,” Khan remembers his friend who was a part of the procession as saying.
“The procession was crossing the Handwara Police Station when the BSF men onboard a Tata Matador (407) stormed out of the vehicle with their Machine Guns, Nobody among the civilians retreated, in fact, their sight angered the protesters, intense sloganeering started,” Ghulam Mohammed remembers.
Describing the rage in the air that morning he says “You could easily sense something was about to happen, by the time all of their men debarked the vehicle, all of them pointed their guns at us, without saying a word, and started firing at the civilians mercilessly.”
No Warning was given to anyone, and we failed to understand what was happening. “We could not figure out what exactly was happening, bullets were raining at us, I had a friend, Ghulam Mohammed Khwaja, he was holding my hands along with several others, three bullets pierced his body, he wanted to say something, but he could not, he died on the spot.”
Khan says he had a miraculous escape. “I still do not know how I survived, but I remember running away through a pile of human bodies and a pool of human blood”
“I also remember, As the bullets were raining on people, a father asked his son to run away, he did not, but then his father fell down on the ground, hit by more bullets, the cries still echo in my ears.”
The guards of a local politician from the Handwara area too fired upon the locals rushing inside his residence to save their lives. By the end of the day, we had 19 bodies piled up on Handwara square. Among the countless injured, six others succumbed to their injuries later, taking the total tally to 25.
Khan speaking to The Kashmiriyat feels that it happened so fast that everybody was in a state of shock to really understand the actual sequence of events that happened on the day. All I remember is crying “Moujay.. Mojay..Mae bachaw moujay..” (Mother, Mother and Help us Help Us) from the spot where men lay down like chickens, culled, in a pool of blood. Many whimpering, crying for help. “The indiscriminate firing lasted for nearly three hours,”
The locals visited the Handwara police station to file a case against the BSF troopers who promised swift action against the erring BSF men. An FIR was lodged under the number 10/1990 mentioning “The protestors who were in thousands assembled from villages were raising provocative slogans and stoned and torched the BSF Tata 407 carrying eatables and also set Dak Bungalow Handwara on fire.”
The government failed to explain the madness behind the massacre— killing 25 civilians to death. Though years later, the case made it to J&K State Human Rights Commission, but to date, no investigation was taken up.
The Kashmiriyat confirmed some of the names:
Ghulam Muhammad Khwaja of Kulangam Handwara,
Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh of Wejhama,
Ghulam Hasan
Mir Younus,
Ali Muhammad Policeman,
Ali Muhammad Shiekh S Colony Handwara,
Nazir Butt Tatnusa,
Ghulam Muhammad Beigh of Wadepora.
Muhammad Rustum Shah of Kawwari,
Sharief u Din Khan of Walrama
Muhammad Shafi War of Divaspora
Shafi Khan of Sodal,
Nazir Ahmad Dar of Braripora,
Saifuddin Khan of Wullarhama,
Ali Mohammad Itoo of Chogal,
Ghulam Muhammad War
Muhammad Amin Masala,
Abdul rashid Hanga