New Delhi: More than 36 years after he was killed along with his son by terrorists in Anantnag, the State Investigation Agency (SIA) of the Jammu and Kashmir Police Wednesday raided several locations as part of its probe into the 1990 killing of Kashmiri Pandit writer Sarwanand Koul Premi.
The case was initially registered by Anantnag District Police, and has recently been transferred to the SIA, the state’s specialised agency to probe terror conspiracy cases.
Premi was one of the handful of Kashmiri Pandits left behind in the Kashmir Valley after a series of killings of members of the community by militants in through the 1980s.
It was on the intervening night of 29-30 April 1990 that three armed militants forcibly entered the Koul house. They first looted the family, taking even pashmina shawls. They demanded that Premi come with them to their commander. When the poet’s younger son Virender insisted he would go too, both were taken. On 1 May, the bodies of father and son were found hanging from a tree in forested area about 20 km away from their home. Marks of torture were obvious: bones broken, eyes gouged out, nails hammered into their foreheads. The bodies also had cigarette burns besides gunshot wounds.
Premi was famous for his body of work, including translating the Bhagavad Gita into Kashmiri. According to local and historical accounts, Premi was a vocal advocate of communal harmony in the Valley; he kept a copy of the Quran at his residence.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration conferred a lifetime achievement award on Koul in 2022. Recalling Premi’s role in literature and society, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had called him a towering man of ideas and ideals. “Sarwanandji made a great contribution to the freedom struggle and infused new life in the bonds of our national unity. Throughout his life, he followed the universal and eternal values of peace, co-existence and cooperation,” Sinha said on the occasion.
Police sources said that the SIA investigation has uncovered several details that may prove conclusive in identifying the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The officials emphasised that SIA has had to deal with verifying historical records and archives to piece together crucial information related to the brutal abduction and murder.
“Many crucial and previously undisclosed details in this 1990 case have now been uncovered decades later through the painstaking efforts of the SIA, and are currently under investigation. These significant developments represent a major breakthrough and a decisive shift in the investigation of this decades-old, horrific terror case,” a police officer said.
The development comes months after the SIA filed a chargesheet in another case related to the killing of a Kashmiri Pandit woman in the Valley. The woman, named Sarla Bhat, was abducted, tortured before being killed, and her bullet-riddled body was dumped in downtown Srinagar alongside a note branding her a mukhbir (informer), on 18 April 1990. Aged 36 at the time, Bhat was a nurse at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences.
The SIA has filed a 737-page chargesheet before a Srinagar court charging jailed separatist leader Yasin Malik as the prime accused in the case.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
Also Read: 36 yrs after Sarla Bhat murder, Yasin Malik named main accused in J&K SIA chargesheet