FIRST-AID FOR THE STRICKEN

LG Manoj Sinha launches a mission to bring relief to thousands of families left broken by terrorism

- Kaleem Geelani

KOUSAR JAN USED TO SAY, as a little kid, that she would grow up to be a doctor. But then, while still in Class II, her life was plunged into a perverse negative of the paradise outside. Hapatnar, her village in Pahalgam, means the 'land of bears', yet it was the wolves that came for them. On a summer night in 2002, their home was burnt down and her father with an extra serving of brutality: his head and bullet-pierced body were found on two opposite banks of a water stream. Fear of the gun kept everyone away. Also, the social stigma that attaches to those that terrorists branded as 'police informers'.