Nearly 3 decades on, SIA reopens Wandhama massacre investigation

Jammu and Kashmir’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened the investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits were killed in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, officials said.

The agency has also begun investigations into the killings of Kashmiri Pandit poet and journalist Sarwanand Koul Premi and BJP leader Tika Lal Taploo, officials said.

A senior official said the reopening of the cases was part of a wider effort to pursue long-pending cases of targeted killings during the peak of militancy in the Valley.

“The investigation is part of the cases that are being reopened to take the older cases to their logical conclusion and ensure justice for the victims,” the official said.

On the night of January 25, 1998, 23 members of the Kashmiri Pandit community were killed by unidentified terrorists in Wandhama village. According to officials, a group of armed men entered a family’s house on the pretext of asking for tea before opening fire on the family and neighbours. Among those killed were 10 women, nine men and four children.

Sources said investigations have also been initiated into the killings of Premi and Taploo.

Premi, a Kashmiri Pandit poet and journalist, was abducted and killed along with his son on the night of April 30, 1990. Taploo, a prominent BJP leader and its vice-president in Jammu and Kashmir, was killed in 1989.

The SIA has recently stepped up efforts to reinvestigate old militancy-related cases.

Earlier this month, the agency conducted searches at nine locations across the Union Territory in connection with the 1990 murder of a Kashmiri Pandit writer and his son.

The agency has also recently filed a chargesheet against Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik and four others in connection with the 1990 abduction and killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat.