On eve of talks, 2 strikes: 32 Hindus killed in J&K

Two days before the Prime Minister’s scheduled meeting with the Hurriyat leadership, suspected militants of the Lashkar-e-Toiba struck in a big way, killing 19 Hindus, including a 9-year-old girl.

Two days before the Prime Minister’s scheduled meeting with the Hurriyat leadership, suspected militants of the Lashkar-e-Toiba struck in a big way, killing 19 Hindus, including a 9-year-old girl, after herding them out of their homes around midnight Sunday in the remote Kulhand area of Doda district.

In another attack last evening, 13 Hindus were abducted from the Basantgarh area of Udhampur district and subsequently murdered. While four bodies were recovered last night, security forces came across the remaining bodies today.

In the Doda attack, at least eleven others were injured. Doda is the home district of Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad who was one of the four successful candidates in the Assembly bypolls in the state.

Army helicopters ferried the injured from Kulhand to the Government Medical College and Hospital in Jammu.

The area where this massacre took place comprises Dhawa and Pounchala villages.

Thakur Singh, an eyewitness to the killings at Pounchala, said that two militants called him from his house at 10.30 pm, saying they wanted to hold a meeting at the house of village lumberdar Gopichand. As he accompanied them, they called more Hindus from their houses enroute. At Gopichand’s house, they made the villagers sit in a room for two hours and then killed 10 of the them. Thakur Singh was the only one to escape as he was buried under the bodies.

In the meantime, another group of militants entered adjoining Dhawa village and herded villagers into the house of a chowkidar. There they killed nine Hindus.

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The villagers were the first to bring the injured to the district hospital in Doda. The Kulhand area, 26 km away from Doda town, has no motorable road and can be reached only on foot. The road ends at Bharat, 10 km from Doda.

Chief Minister Azad said those behind the attack would not be spared. He said the militants were frustrated over the overwhelming response of the people to the polls and the peace process.

“Now they are killing innocent people in frustration,” Azad said. He directed officials to strengthen village defence committees in areas not easily accessible.

Despite movement of militants in Kulhand area, there had been no violence there ever since militancy erupted in Doda district. So when a police post was set up there in 2000, local residents objected and made the administration remove it. They did not even agree to the administration’s advice to set up a village committee.

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Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil will visit the area tomorrow. BJP chief Rajnath Singh too will visit Doda tomorrow.