19th April 1990. Kashmir. Sarla Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit, was gang-raped by a number of Muslims, stripped naked and murdered brazenly. Her dead body was thrown on the roadside in full view of the public.
4th June 1990. Kashmir. Girija Tickoo in Bandipora was abducted and blindfolded. Then four men took turns raping her. When she identified one of them by his voice, the men fearing identification took her to a wood processing unit and mechanically sawed her alive. Sometime later, almost a similar fate befell Kumari Babli and her mother Smt. Roopwati of Pulwama.
13th August 1990. Kashmir. Babli Raina of Sopore, a teacher by profession, was gang-raped in her house in presence of her family members.
8th August 1991. Kashmir. Asha Koul was abducted from Achabal, Anantnag, and taken to an abandoned house of a Kashmiri Pandit in Srinagar where she was gang-raped for many days and then tortured to death. Her body was found later in a decomposed state in that very house on August 26, 1991.
These are only few incidents of the rape of Kashmiri Pandit women in Kashmir. There were hundreds of similar incidents that were unreported. No one spoke about them. No media highlighted the gruesome incidents. Justice was denied to them. And their horrific saga remained in oblivion. No one speaks about them either today!
Leave about the denial of justice in the rape and murder of Kashmiri Pandit women and children in the 1990s. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits are still refugees in their own motherland! The irony is that illegal Rohingyas find safe haven in the ancestral homeland of the Kashmiri Pandits! No media speaks about these. And they have been suffering in silence since the Exodus.
Rape is evil irrespective of caste, creed, community, and religion. There should be stern laws to punish the culprits. Media and law highlighting the victim of just one particular community is impiety. There should be equal justice for all.