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Farooq says some powers didn’t want Chattisinghpora investigated
WSN Network

SRINAGAR: India’s minister and former Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah claimed on Sunday that some powers did not want the massacre of 35 Sikhs in  Chattisinghpora in 2000 to be investigated. “I wanted the judge probing the fake encounter in Brakpora to look into the Chattisinghpora massacre too, but some powers did not want to do it. Now that the central government is headed by a Sikh, the Sikhs of J&K should mount pressure and get the case reinvestigated by a retired supreme court judge,” Farooq, who was the chief minister of J&K from 1996-2002, said at a function here.

Unidentified gunmen descended on Chattisinghpora on March 20, 2000, and killed 35 Sikhs. Five days later, security forces branded five innocent men as militants and killed them in Pathribal. Abdullah ordered the exhumation of those killed in Pathribal and their DNA samples were sent to Hyderabad. It emerged that the samples had been fudged.

“They were held responsible for killing Sikhs. Thanks to Allah, they were proved innocent.” he said. The minister said he is writing a book which will have a chapter on this incident, “This should be opened after my death.”

But the fact remains that Abdullahs too have failed to provide protection to the Sikhs. Many Sikhs living in the valley feel they have been left to their fate by both the Central and State governments. They spend their days living in fear-psychosis.

An All Parties Sikh Coordination Committee has been set up but it too has complained that the Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir face social and political problems mainly because they have had inadequate representation in the Assembly.

Minorities’ representatives (Hindus and Buddhists) in the State Assembly support their communities and raise the issues facing them, but pay no attention to the Sikhs of the State or their problems, mainly because they do not have any idea about them.

 Massive exodus of the Sikhs from the valley in search of jobs has gone largely unreported as the youth chose to migrate to Srinagar from the villages, leaving behind their sources of income/revenue such as orchards, agricultural land, and other means of earning a livelihood. This exodus has left the community economically weak and dependent.

In many cases, the agricultural land, orchards and other property belonging to the Sikh community has been occupied by security forces at comparatively cheaper rates. There are many instances wherein no compensation or rent has been paid at all to the owners till date.

Governments and politicians, instead of meeting the demands of the Sikh community at political, economic and social levels, have been seeking to divide it on the basis of their ethnicity, like the Muzaffarabadi Sikhs, Punchi Sikhs, Mirpuri Sikhs, Kashmiri Sikhs, etc. This divide and rule policy provides them the advantage to factionalise the community so that no solution can be arrived at. As a result of this, their demands have been pending since the Partition of the State in 1947-48.

25 November  2009
 

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