Sarla Bhat, a 27-year-old Kashmiri Pandit from Anantnag, was abducted 35 years ago on April 18 in 1990 and was found dead the next morning. Her bullet-riddled body was found on the roadside at Umar Colony Mallabagh, Soura. The State Investigation Agency (SIA) of Jammu & Kashmir, three decades later, has reopened the case. On Tuesday, it conducted raids at eight locations in Srinagar, including the residence of former Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Peer Noorul Haq Shah, also known as “Air Marshal”.
Who Was Sarla Bhat J&K Reopens | 1990 Nurse Murder Case
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- Sarla Bhat, a 27-year-old Kashmiri Pandit from Anantnag, was abducted 35 years ago on April 18 in 1990 and was found dead the next morning. Her bullet-riddled body was found on the roadside at Umar Colony Mallabagh, Soura.
- The State Investigation Agency (SIA) of Jammu & Kashmir, three decades later, has reopened the case. On Tuesday, it conducted raids at eight locations in Srinagar, including the residence of former Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Peer Noorul Haq Shah, also known as “Air Marshal”. SIA said that it has recovered “incriminating evidence” linked to the crime, and called the case a classic example of “justice delayed, but not denied”. The officials, without revealing the nature of the evidence, said that it would play a “pivotal role” in identifying those who planned and executed the attacks in 1990.
‘Most Chilling Reminder Of 1990 Exodus’
- BJP leader Amit Malviya claimed that Bhat was “gang-raped” before her body was “cut into pieces and dumped to instil terror”.
- “Her murder was not just a heinous crime but part of the targeted campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kashmiri Pandits, aimed at driving the Hindu minority out of the Valley. Sarla Bhatt’s killing remains one of the most chilling reminders of the atrocities that triggered the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990,” he further added.
Who Was Sarla Bhat
- Bhatt, a 27-year-old from south Kashmir, was abducted by the militants of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in 1990. Her bullet-riddled body was recovered after five days from old Srinagar city.
- A resident of Anantnag, she was posted at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar. After the eruption of militancy, she was among the few Kashmiri Pandits who stayed put in the Valley. On April 14, 1990, she was at her hostel in SKIMS when militants abducted her, claiming she was a police informer. After the body was found, allegations had also emerged that she had been tortured and raped.
- In 2023, the SIA reopened the murder case of Ganjoo, who too was killed by JKLF militants. Ganjoo, who had sentenced to death JKLF founder Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, was killed in November 1989 in Srinagar.
- In 2017, the Supreme Court rejected a petition seeking the reopening and investigation into the killings of several hundred Kashmiri Pandits by militants since the beginning of the insurgency in Kashmir.
- A Bench comprising the then Chief Justice of India J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud dismissed the plea, arguing that 27 years had passed since the Pandit exodus from the Valley, and evidence “is unlikely to be available”. In 2023, the apex court again dismissed a curative petition by an organisation, Roots in Kashmir, seeking investigations into the killing of Kashmiri Pandits. Two months after the dismissal of the curative petition by the Supreme Court, however, the Lt Governor Manoj Sinha administration reopened the judge murder case and hinted that other cases would be reopened too.
- A report compiled by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in 2008 on the basis of a survey of its own cases revealed that from 1989 onwards, militants had killed 209 Kashmiri Pandits – 109 of them in 1990 alone. Kashmiri Pandit groups, however, say that the number is higher.
- The police survey revealed that 140 cases were registered at police stations across the Valley, chargesheets were filed in 24 cases, while in 115, the perpetrators were yet to be identified. Thirty-one local militants were booked in the 24 cases in which chargesheets had been filed.
Case
- Even after her death, her family was threatened, with locals warning them not to attend her cremation. Since the perpetrators couldn’t be brought to justice by the local police, the case was handed over to the SIA last year. The move is part of J&K LG Manoj Sinha’s administration’s broader effort to identify and prosecute those responsible for historic acts of terror against Kashmiri Pandits.
- “This is about sending a message — no matter how much time has passed, the state will pursue justice for terror victims,” CNN-News18 quoted one official as saying.
