Kulgam: Two hurried and secret midnight burials in 1994 in this village hold an unspoken, unacknowledged and ungrieved story of Kashmir violence.
Grass has grown over the burial pits in the front yard of two homes in this south Kashmir village in Kulgam district. And with that, a shroud of silence has been placed. The two young men—Ali Mohammad Bhat and Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, killed for being ‘mukhbir’, or informers—were not allowed their place in the common village graveyard.
In the thirty-two years that followed, their unmarked graves have seen no rituals of remembrance or collective grieving. No martyrdom marches and oral histories either. They were seen as the enemies of the Kashmiri freedom cause and the enemies of Hizbul Mujahideen. Their stories are not an official part of Kashmir’s grief.
On 19 June 1994, a regular bus ride to work turned fatal for the 26-year-old Ali, who was a police constable, when four armed Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists stopped the vehicle, pulled him out and abducted him. A week later, two bodies with bullet wounds were dumped in the middle of the street—Ali and his friend Maqbool, who was a local shopkeeper.
While Ali was killed on suspicion of being a mukhbir, Maqbool was accused of supplying carpets to the army from his shop. Later, it was revealed that the allegation was untrue.
“The Hizbul Mujahideen militant himself told us that my brother was not a mukhbir, but they had orders,” said his youngest brother, who studied in Class 6 in 1994. “These orders were mostly from the Jamaat-e-Islami leaders in our village.”
Three decades later, the stigma continues. Ali’s family faces discrimination in the neighbourhood and claims indifference by the Jammu and Kashmir administration. Ali’s wife had earlier approached the then district administration for some kind of compensation. However, she never received a response.
“Back then, state schemes could never be fully implemented because of systemic corruption and incompetence,” a political analyst in Srinagar told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity. “Sometimes, under such schemes, terrorists’ families were preferred over victims. It was a bizarre irony.”
Back then, being a Kashmiri Muslim came before everything else, even the uniform, a senior police officer told ThePrint, adding, “Even Jamaat members were government employees. Some were teachers, others worked in PWD and similar departments. Suspicion was never raised at them because they considered themselves to be Kashmiri Muslims first.”
The past is buried, just like the bodies, to keep the normalcy alive. However, it lingers in family silences and in the long, blank stares at the courtyard.
A hushed burial
It was a neighbour who had guided the Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists about Ali’s whereabouts that fateful day. After almost a week in captivity, the terrorists had set the duo free. As Ali and Maqbool walked a few metres, they were shot from behind in the head.
Then the spectacle of burial began.
The bodies of Ali and Maqbool were not allowed to be buried in the village graveyard. Jamaat leaders used loudspeakers to warn villagers not to provide them with a kafan (burial shroud). The family begged the leaders for a proper burial in the local graveyard, but all their requests were in vain.
The loudspeakers from the mosque blared, “Nobody will talk, drink tea or associate with the family. No one will provide them with a burial shroud, and the graveyard gates are closed for the family.”
Ali’s family didn’t dare to step out. They stayed inside their homes, silent—a silence of hope, hiding a harsh, heavy sorrow.
“For days, I could not make sense of what had befallen our family. We were ostracised, treated as if we didn’t belong here. We would tiptoe inside our house and talk in hushed tones to avoid any further trouble,” Ali’s mother said.
Their grief-stricken families kept pleading with the villagers, but eventually gave up. They dug graves in their courtyard, arranged a kafan secretly and buried them without a janaza (Islamic prayer). No neighbours or relatives came.
South Kashmir, at that time, was a hotbed of militancy and the influence of Jamaat-e-Islami, now banned, ran deep in the society. They were the final word, and their writ on Ali and Maqbool ran large.
As soon as Hizbul Mujahideen was born, Jamaat took over control. One was the militant group, the other acted as the front facing the socio-religious group, often taking part in government-related areas.
“Hizbul Mujahideen was the military wing of Jamaat. So the takeover was natural. Most of Hizbul cadres and the commanders were from Jamat-e-Islami background like Ahsan Dar, Syed Salahudin, Shams ul Haq, Riyaz Rasool, etc,” the police officer said, adding that every chief commander of the militant organisation carried a Jamat background.
On 27 June 1994, a pall of grief had dawned upon the courtyard of Ali’s house. The land was dug in the dead of night for the burial process. Family members and relatives suppressed their shrieks, preventing their wails from traversing the neighbourhood. Tears silently streamed down their cheeks.
The burial shroud, arranged in secret by a relative, was wrapped around the body as the mother and wife kissed the pale, yellowed forehead one last time. The body was then hurriedly lowered into the pit. Prayers for the aakhirat were whispered, and the grave was filled with soil.
“The next morning, the dead bodies had disappeared in the courtyard with no signs or a tombstone.
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‘17,000 Muslims killed by terrorists’
In the early years of the insurgency, it was not only Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to flee. But a section of Kashmiri Muslims seen as aligned with the state were also targeted. A few of them fled overnight, and those who stayed back lived through violence, suspicion and social ostracism.
Today, the stories of several such families—counted among the victims of militancy—rarely find any place in the larger political narrative, films, books or online archives of tragedy. No human rights groups take up their cause, no political party gives voice to their families. They were seen as the face of the Indian state in Kashmir, at a time when Pakistan was actively supporting the terror attacks.
Even decades later, many of these families are reluctant to speak, fearing renewed backlash. A senior police officer in Jammu and Kashmir put the number of “non-combatant” Muslims killed by terrorists at 17,000.
“More Muslims died for India than against the country,” said the officer.
Caught between the dominant narrative of Kashmiri Pandit exodus and Kashmiri Muslims suffering, the stories of these families have fallen through the cracks and been pushed to the margins—invisibilised, ignored and invalidated. Their stories reflect the complexities of the Kashmiri society in the 1990s and the early 2000s, where militant groups started fighting amongst themselves, neighbours aligned either with the state or with terrorists, and deep mistrust seeped in.
“The terror campaign was first established in 1989 with the murder of several National Conference leaders and other political parties at the local level. In the 1992-1994 period, a lot of villagers were targeted by Kangaroo courts manned by fundamentalists and backed by terrorists,” said David Devadas, a journalist and author, who has worked extensively on Kashmir and its issues.
He added that many Kashmiris were killed and horribly tortured after being accused of being mukhbirs, very often falsely.
Last year, on 22 July, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha launched a ‘first-of-its-kind’ portal for the families of terror victims in July.
The initiative was received well by the families of terror victims, who saw it as an end to decades of neglect. Within a couple of days, hundreds of complaints were registered. Before this, the families of terror victims were forgotten and had never found their voice in the larger conflict.
“The initiative will streamline and expedite the process of providing relief, compassionate appointments, and other forms of assistance to those who suffered from terrorism in the Union Territory,” the LG had said.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has been providing government jobs to the next of kin (NOK) of the terror victims under the Statutory Rules Order-43 (SRO-43) and Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme to provide economic stability to the family. In March, Sinha handed over 27 such appointments to victims of terrorism. But Ali’s son, who was born months after his killing, did not feature in that list.
“We have registered at the SRO several times, but there was no response. Our families have suffered the most and are continuing to suffer. We were not only the victims of guns but also of radical Islam. Even now, during arguments, our past is often brought in to isolate us,” Ali’s younger brother, who was wearing a worn-out pheran, told ThePrint.
The idyllic village, with streams flowing inside the houses and sheep grazing in the garden, has concealed its past as if nothing had happened. It is one of the popular localities in the area and was known for its notorious activities and open support for terrorists. The young boys from the villages would travel around 150 km to enter Pakistan via Kupwara. They would train as Mujahids in the neighbouring country. With the support of the Jamaat, these trained terrorists used to exercise their control over the village.
According to locals from other villages, the terrorists would land at the houses of the villagers unannounced, where residents were obliged to feed them, and they would stay overnight sometimes.
“The support they received was mostly driven by fear rather than by willingness,” one of the locals said.
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Ali’s last letter
A faceoff between terrorists and security forces pushed Ali into the limelight. After the gunfight, the Army dragged the bodies of the terrorists, reportedly from Pakistan, through the village. Soldiers were asking if anyone recognised them. When no one answered, they turned to Ali.
“The Army told Ali that since he was in the police, he should find out who was supporting these Pakistani militants,” his mother, who was wearing a pheran and her head covered with a scarf, told ThePrint. “He never revealed anything, but that moment brought him into public attention.”
The 80-year-old mother’s hands were hard and cracked from years of hard work. From household work to ploughing fields, she had done all in her younger days.
Tall, well-dressed, and fond of branded shoes, Ali had little idea that the incident had sealed his fate. Days later, he was abducted. His mother went from one Jamaat-e-Islami leader to another, vouching for her son’s innocence and pleading for his release.
“I placed my shawl at their feet and told them my son had not given any information. He was being misunderstood only because he was in the police,” she said, her voice breaking. “Every time, they sent me back, saying he would be fine.”
She added that several Jamaat-e-Islami members were present in the village, and despite being government employees, they were never questioned.
Another resident, who witnessed the events leading to the killing, said that Ali’s only mistake was that he didn’t cooperate with the terrorists. “Those who aligned with them, despite working with the government, were left alone. Ali chose not to,” the resident said.
Before his killing, Ali wrote a letter to his family with a special mention for his brothers. “Don’t make my brothers wear new clothes or shoes. The neighbours get jealous.” His younger brother was 11 years old then. He still doesn’t like wearing new clothes.
Days after Ali’s killing, his dead body became another flashpoint for tension in the village.
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Continued threats & social ostracisation
After receiving the body, Ali’s family kept it on the only bed in the house. Soon, a mob surrounded their house and started smashing windows and banging on their gates with curses, asking for the “body to be given to them”.
“We were not even allowed to mourn,” Ali’s middle brother said. “The mob was led by the Jamaat members of the village. It was very young. Our uncles and other relatives succeeded in stopping them.”
The social ostracisation grew louder. Ali’s younger brothers were constantly bullied.
“We were called mukbirs. Nobody would talk to us. I would cry on my way to school. I would find excuses to skip school,” he told ThePrint.
Ali’s father, who was a butcher, began receiving threats from terrorists to stop working, as nobody wanted to buy meat from a mukhbir’s family. When one of his sons went to homes to collect unpaid dues, he was shooed away and warned to stop business. Soon, the family received letters from Hizbul Mujahideen warning them to shut their meat shop.
“We had no other source of income. We kept ignoring the threat letter until a letter came that shook us,” said the middle brother. The letter mentioned that if they didn’t comply with what was being asked, their other son would be picked up.
And soon, the sons were picked up, and the house was set ablaze. It was only then that the family approached the authorities, following which the houses of JEI leaders were also burnt down. The sons escaped from the terrorists’ custody, and the army kept them in one of the abandoned Kashmiri Pandit houses.
“We lived in that house for a year. We were not able to retrieve anything from our house, only a photo album,” said Ali’s mother. One faded photo from the album is now framed. It has Ali as a groom surrounded by his friends and relatives. Ali’s wife left the village and went to live with her family.
“She said she can’t live here in the same courtyard where her husband’s grave was.” She didn’t remarry, moved back to her parents’ and dedicated her youthful years to raising her children. She rarely speaks about the past.
“She has buried it in the deepest corners of her heart,” said one of Ali’s brothers, who later went on to become the first army man from his village. Another brother joined the Ikhwan forces—the pro-government militia in the 1990s, mostly composed of surrendered terrorists. It emerged in 1994 after local terrorists were marginalised by Hizbul-Mujahideen, which was supported by Pakistan.
Maqbool’s family also left their village and chose silence.
Years later, it was revealed by the police that Ali was not an informer. The family returned to the village and built the house on the same land where it had been burnt down. A new structure was built, but old scars remained etched in its ground. It started with one room in 1998 and grew into a two-storey building by 2010.
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‘Footprints of Jamaat alive’
Ali’s mother still doesn’t openly talk about her son. Death anniversaries are observed inside the house. What pains them is that his grave lies just across the house, and they cannot mourn him at the site.
Although the Jamaat-e-Islami has been banned, the family said its ideological footprints are still alive.
“We sometimes sit in silence and wonder what we did to deserve this? And then I think of my brother. How old he would have been, what life might have looked like for him…” his words fade into silence.
In the corner of the living room, with fading green walls, the 80-year-old mother touches the face of his son in the framed photograph and presses her lips against the glass, a tear trickling down.
The room has no photograph of Ali. It is tucked away inside a sandook. In one corner, a stack of blankets lies piled one over the other. On the carpet, next to a window overlooking a small vegetable garden, Ali’s younger brother sits, fumbling with his hands. “I miss him.”
(Edited by Saptak Datta)