In Kashmir, numbered graves reveal little about the ‘foreign militants’
GANTMULLA (BARAMULLA) : A discreet call went out as bullets whizzed past and the report of automatic rifles echoed in the surrounding mountains of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on July 3. The message from Bamnoo village to a police station in north Kashmir was short. “Keep a grave ready.”
Security forces have killed two militants, but their partner was holed up in a house and fighting desperately. In the thick of the counter-insurgency operation, ground intelligence suggested the third gunman could be a foreigner.
The man was shot dead hours later and his grave was ready by the Jhelum river in Baramulla district’s Gantmulla village, about 100km away.
But the pit remained empty for two weeks, covered with a tin sheet. The body never reached the pre-assigned grave. Reason: the man turned out to be a Kashmiri and was, therefore, buried in his native village.
The gravedigger’s labour in the windy, rainswept Gantmulla didn’t go waste, though.
The corpse of an unidentified foreign militant, killed in a cave hideout in Pulwama’s Tral forests, arrived a fortnight later.
The waiting burial pit became one of the 43 graves of “foreign militants” on a rocky patch in Gantmulla, a mountain village buffeted by breathtaking green-
COPS PROVIDE PATCHY STRANDS OF INFORMATION SUCH AS THE MILITANT’S CODE NAME, THE ORGANISATION AND THE TIME HE WAS ACTIVE FOR. HIS LIFE AND FAMILY, THOUGH, REMAIN A MYSTERY.
ery and the Jhelum. It is close to the Line of Control, the de-facto border between India and Pakistan, and 65km north of Srinagar.
The graveyard is strategically sandwiched between Sheeri police station and a military camp. Except for two small rocks at either end of the grassy mounds, the rudimentary graves laid out in two neat rows are largely unmanned and unmarked.
For epithets, some of the older graves have small metal plaques with serial numbers, betraying the bare minimum information — the place of death. The graves are numbered till 22. The rest are ready but police are hard-pressed for time.
“S. No 1: From Khrew,” reads the oldest plaque. Khrew is a town in Pulwama.
Sheeri police officers keep a record of the dead on their watch, but won’t share details. They won’t even tell the graveyard’s age, though villagers believe it probably sprang up a year ago.
Little is known about dead “foreign militants”. Police pro- vide patchy strands of information such as the militant’s code name, his organisation and the time he was active in the Kashmir Valley. His life and family, though, remain a mystery.
Police said villagers help during the last rites. Abdul Majeed Mir, 50, a tea-seller, was the first gravedigger to lend a hand.
“We are all humans and it is a universal obligation for us to respect the dead. Also, the Prophet taught us to perform the last rites with respect. Rest, I don’t care whether they are militants or otherwise,” Mir said.
The shroud of official silence and secrecy helps authorities prevent people from making a “martyr” of the non-Kashmiri militants.