‘No one is bothered about our plight’

JAMMU: The victims of the latest ceasefire violations along the IB in Jammu see incursions a never ending phenomenon and feel that there is not any political will to bring people out of this morass.

Five persons, including a BSF jawan and a couple were killed in the latest onslaught by Pakistani Rangers in the RS Pura, Arnia and Bishnah sectors on Friday.

Ashwani Kumar, 26, was getting ready to join his duty at the Jammu airport, when a mortar shell landed around 9.30 am in the compound of their house in Treba village, situated along IB.

Ashwani and his uncle Waryam Singh 80, both suffered splinter injuries and are now admitted in Government Medical College and Hospital in Jammu. Fortunately, rest of the family members escaped unhurt.

Waryam Singh says he has been witnessing this cycle of violence for the last 50 years now. “The violence has become part and parcel of our lives. I don’t think there will be any resolution to this in my lifetime,” he says. Ashwani points out that there is a lack of political will to resolve the issue. “The political class is only confined to rhetoric, while the situation remains unchanged on the ground,” he says.

In Gulabgarh village near RS Pura, Seema Devi was preparing breakfast for the family when a shell landed at the entrance of her house. The splinters from the shell have pierced into her left leg.

On her bedside in hospital is Seema’s brother-in-law, who too was injured in firing from across the border in 2003. “I was nine at that time. I do not think that violence will ever end. Our daily life has become hostage to this never ending cycle”, says Ramesh Kumar. “For a decade we are being promised of five marla plots to each family on safer locations, besides construction of community bunkers. But these have only remained limited to mere announcements,” he says.

Sapna Choudhary, 16, who also suffered splinter injuries, was moving in her house when a shell fell at her home in Gorian Chak near Arnia. “I have been witnessing firing for the last 20 years. I don’t think it will ever end,” says Sapna’s mother.