Grief turns to fear in Kashmir

INDIA’S MILITARY CRACKDOWN

- SHAMS IRFAN and KARISHMA MEHROTRA

THE armoured vehicles came at dusk as families were preparing dinner.

Two days earlier, gunmen had killed 26 people, most of them tourists, in a remote Himalayan meadow. Now hundreds of Indian soldiers descended on this tiny village, hunting for suspects.

They encircled the home of Adil Hussain Thoker, one of the militants accused of carrying out the attack, forcing villagers into the surrounding rice fields as darkness fell. At midnight, a thunderous blast ruptured the silence - “The earth shook beneath our feet,” recalled one local, speaking like others in this story on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. The two-storey brick-and-wood house was reduced to rubble.

Indian officials say they are carrying out controlled demolitions of homes where explosives have been found. Thoker’s family members vehemently deny the charge and say they haven't seen or heard from Adil since 2018.

“What happened in Pahalgam is gruesome, and no sane person would endorse such an act,” said a young boy in Guree, referring to the deadly militant attack on April 22. “But why punish civilians?”

That question encapsulates a familiar dread in Kashmir, where people have long felt trapped between India and Pakistan — which each administer different parts of the Muslim-majority territory but claim full ownership — and between militancy and militarisation.

Kashmiris say they are cornered by a cruel paradox: forced to publicly condemn the violence even as they are made to bear the cost. In the face of an intensifying Indian security crackdown, grief for the dead is hardening into fear.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Pahalgam. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told reporters on Wednesday that militants had “cross-border linkages,” a reference to arch-rival Pakistan. Islamabad has condemned the killings and rejected claims of involvement.