‘Not leaving’: J&K bizman whose staff was shot dead by terrorists
Sandeep Mawa was the actual target of terror attack that left his salesman dead in Srinagar on Monday
SRINAGAR: A Kashmiri Pandit businessman believed to be the actual target of an attack that left his salesman dead in Srinagar on Monday has vowed not to leave Kashmir again, saying running away is not the solution even as his family was fearful and wanted to relocate.
“Making us run away and killing... is the policy. They are nobody’s friends,” said Sandeep Mawa, the businessman. “There is fear and the family including my father is saying let us go. But how is running away a solution? For how long will we keep on running. For how long you keep on dying and we keep on running away. This has to stop somewhere,” he said. “If there is a mistake by one, one cannot punish others.”
Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, the salesman, was shot dead shortly after closing the Mawas’ dry fruits shop. “During the day police informed me of an imminent attack and I left but my vehicle remained behind. And in the evening when Ibrahim opened my vehicle, he was fired upon. They mistook him for me,” said Sandeep Mawa.
The Mawas relocated to Delhi in 1990 after Sandeep Mawa’s father, Roshan Lal Mawa, was shot four times in his abdomen. The family returned to Kashmir in 2019 after 28 years and restarted their wholesale dry fruit business.
The Mawas were among the bulk of the Kashmir Pandits. who left the Valley after insurgency erupted in the region in 1989. In 2016, the then state government said that over 1, 54,080 people migrated from the Valley in 1990.
Sandeep Mawa said police feared an attack on him and assigned him personal security officers. He added on Tuesday, the little-known organisation Muslim Janbaaz Force first claimed that they had killed him before issuing a corrigendum that they had mistakenly killed Khan. Sandeep Mawa said Khan was like a brother to him. “He used to be with me everywhere; in Delhi, Bangalore, and even Jammu. It is unfortunate that he lost his life. We are trying for a government job for his daughter or son.”
A day before Khan’s killing, Jammu and Kashmir Police constable Tawseef Ahmad Wani was shot dead in Srinagar. Makhan Lal Bindroo, 68, a Kashmiri Pandit chemist, was earlier among 11 civilians killed in a series of targeted attacks last month. He was among a handful of Kashmir Pandits who stayed back in the Valley in the 1990s. According to the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation of Pandits who stayed back, around 800 families of the community remain in the Valley.
In March, Union minister G Kishan Reddy informed Parliament that since 1990, 44,167 Kashmiri families moved out of the Valley. Out of them, 39,782 families were those of Hindus. Reddy said around 3,800 displaced Kashmiri have returned to Kashmir since the 1990s. He added 520 of them went back after the abrogation of the region’s semi-autonomous status to take up jobs under a special scheme.