J&K HC reopens closed case of 2003 Nadimarg massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits

SRINAGAR: The J&K and Ladakh high court ordered Thursday reopening of the Nadimarg massacre case—one of the worst carnages in which masked Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists shot dead 24 Kashmiri Pandit men, women and children in a small village of Pulwama district on the night of March 23, 2003.
The HC decision came on an application filed by the prosecution (the State) seeking recall of an earlier order that dismissed a criminal revision petition a decade ago and effectively closed the case. The trial reopens with a hearing on September 15.
LeT terrorists in fake military uniform and allegedly aided by some associates from nearby areas raided Nadimarg, a village of around 52 Kashmiri Pandits who had stayed behind when thousands from the community fled the Valley in the face of rising atrocities against them.
The gunmen lined up 11 men, 11 women and two toddlers between 11pm and midnight on an open area in the village, 54km south of Srinagar. They all died in a hail of bullets. The age of the victims ranged from two to 65.
Many of the terrorists involved in the massacre were either killed or captured in subsequent years. Seven suspects were indicted after investigation and the case was transferred to the Shopian sessions court, which rejected a revision petition seeking examination of material and witnesses during the pendency of the trial.
The prosecution said in its application that witnesses had migrated out of the Valley and were reluctant to depose in Shopian out of fear.
The lower court had said that allowing a review was beyond its jurisdiction. Thereafter, the HC dismissed the revision petition on December 21, 2011. Following this, a new application was filed in 2014.
“For the foregoing reasons, the application of prosecution is allowed and the order dated 21.12.2011 passed by this court is recalled. The registry is directed to post the revision petition for rehearing on 15.09.2022,” Justice Sanjay Dhar said.
Former J&K deputy CM Kavinder Gupta of BJP welcomed the HC’s decision, saying those who were waiting for justice will get it now.
Some of the survivors had sought an investigation into the alleged complicity of policemen in the crime. There were reports of two terrorists visiting a nearby police picket for months before the attack. It was also said that the gunmen disarmed the policemen on duty near the village and then went into the houses under the pretext of searching the premises.
The killing was the second biggest slaughter of non-Muslim Kashmiris in the region. Some 37 Sikhs were gunned down in the town of Chattisinghpora on March 20, 2000, a day before then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India.
The massacre hugely dented government efforts to relocate Kashmiri Pandits back to their homes in the Valley after more than 2 lakh of them fled during the peak of the Pakistan-backed insurgency in the 1990s.