Former Prime Minister VP Singh and his government had intelligence on the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, but they simply ignored it and took no action: Ex-police officer

*Paromita Das

K Rajendra Kumar, former Jammu and Kashmir DGP, told Times Now over the phone that whatever happened in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s should have been revealed years ago.

The entire system failed in the 1990s, and there was a total abdication of responsibility, including government officers and the general public, and what happened to Kashmiri Pandits is very unfortunate and nothing short of a genocide well planned and executed by Pakistani touts operating in Kashmir, who succeeded in ensuring their total migration with the goal of establishing Nizam-e-Mustafa, as publicly declared by various terrorist commanders including Burhan Wani, Hizbul Muj, and others.

Following initial setbacks, the Jammu and Kashmir Police, along with the Indian Army and other CAPF, launched large-scale counter-insurgency operations. It took several years to bring the situation under control, reestablish some semblance of normalcy, and restore the authority of the government.

The JKLF began by targeting top-tier eminent members of the Kashmiri Pandit community, and then moved on to mass selective killings.

We apprehended a top JKLF terrorist, Farooq Ahmed Dar @ Bitta Karate, who was involved in the gruesome killing of scores of Kashmiri Pandits, whose statements I recorded under relevant sections of law under TADA as Superintendent Of Police of City Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, and who openly admitted to killing many Kashmiri Pandits. Despite the fact that adequate legal measures were taken to keep him behind bars and prosecute him, he was acquitted due to a lack of ‘corroborative’ evidence.

More than 5000 security personnel have been killed to date, with 1,500 of them being J&K police officers. Victims should be given justice and be rehabilitated in a dignified manner.

The situation was chaotic, and there was no appreciation for the enormity of the problem, as well as a lack of clarity and action plans for how to deal with it other than dealing with it on a day-to-day basis. In a safe and secure environment, victims should receive justice and honorable rehabilitation.

During the 1990s, V Purushotham Rao, Commandant Non-Selection Grade equivalent to Superintendent of Police, was assigned to the MHA Control Room in the North Block.

When this issue first arose in 1989, he said, “I used to get information from the J&K Governor’s office and mostly from IB officers, and they used to contact me on the hotline, and then we used to lock that information in the register,” and “even when the actual problem began reporting in Jammu & Kashmir, we used to receive the information, and everything was recorded and passed to the higher authorities through proper channel.

” It was eventually stopped, and no action was taken by the government; otherwise, the holocaust would not have occurred.

He emphasized that no action was taken because of former Prime Ministers Rajeev Gandhi and VP Singh’s relationship with Sheikh Abdullah and his family.

Later, I was in charge of radio and television channel security. I used to travel to J&K on a regular basis. A rocket launcher was used to destroy the establishment of government news channels in Jammu and Kashmir at the time. There used to be burned-out houses there. Throughout the massacre, the slogan “Ladke Liye Pakistan, Haske Lenge Hindustan” was chanted.