Set up SIT to identify those responsible for ‘genocide’ of Hindus, Sikhs in J-K: PIL in SC

New Delhi, March 27

A PIL in the Supreme Court has demanded a special investigation team (SIT) to identify those responsible for the alleged genocide of Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir during 1989-2003.

Filed by “We the Citizens”, the petition seeks a census of Hindu and Sikh victims/survivors of the “genocide” to identify and rehabilitate them.

It is the second petition on the issue in the top court in the past one week. It demands that the sale of properties after the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs in January 1990 — whether religious, residential, agricultural, commercial, institutional, educational or any other immovable property — be declared null and void.

The NGO says it has done research by going through books, articles and memoirs of migrants from Kashmir, including ‘My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir’ by former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Jagmohan and ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots’ by Rahul Pandita, with a first-hand account of the “genocide” and exodus of Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs in 1990. “The failure of the then government and police administration and finally the breakdown of the constitutional machinery have been explained in these books. The then government and state machinery did not act at all to protect the life and limb of Hindus and Sikhs and allowed anti-nationals, terrorists and anti-social elements to take control of entire Kashmir. As a result, Hindu and Sikhs citizens lost faith in the government and were forced to migrate to other parts of India,” the public interest litigation (PIL) reads.

Earlier, Kashmiri Pandits’ organisation “Roots in Kashmir” had moved the Supreme Court seeking a court-monitored investigation by the CBI/NIA or a court-appointed agency into the alleged mass murder and genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir during 1989-90, saying the Jammu and Kashmir Police had miserably failed in making any progress on the hundreds of FIRs pending with them.

In a curative petition in the top court, it questioned the court’s 2017 order dismissing a petition for a probe into alleged ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits. Curative petitions are generally not taken up in open court and are heard by circulation among the members of the Bench.

“The instances referred in the petition pertain to the year 1989-90 and more than 27 years have passed by since then. No fruitful purpose would emerge as the evidence is unlikely to be available at this late juncture,” the top court had said in its April 27, 2017, order.