In times of ex­treme rhetoric of be­ing un­der at­tack, agen­das dri­ven by forked tongues, so­cial me­dia mad­ness and 24-hour dead­lines on one side, and de­mo­niz­ing of an en­tire peo­ple and re­gion on the other, our bat­tle must be much big­ger. Sar­bat Da Bhala vow en­joins upon us not to for­get this Ides of March chap­ter that un­der­lines an agenda wor­thy of a Gu­ru’s peo­ple – Jus­tice. A WSN Ex­clu­sive by cel­e­brated ace jour­nal­ist SP Singh.

INDIA has had its fill, watch­ing The Kash­mir Files, and cin­ema halls re­ver­ber­ated with Hin­dutva-drip­ping pa­tri­otic slo­gans mas­querad­ing as abuse for Mus­lims as the coun­try erased a cer­tain his­tory of Kash­mir and in­vented a new one.

As the state mounts an Am­rit­pal-shaped spec­ta­cle with every new video grab, and as Pun­jab’s YouTube jour­nal­ism goes ga ga over it, rustling ever more views and col­lect­ing YouTube dol­lars, the mes­sage go­ing out there is that the mi­nor­ity Sikh com­mu­nity has to do more on the hu­man rights and civil lib­er­ties front.

As the Panth dived into a sea of videos, CCTV grabs and po­lice’s claim about sight­ings of Am­rit­pal Singh, al­legedly on the run but al­ways man­ag­ing to leave be­hind an im­age in a lens – pe­cu­liarly never more than one in a day – March 20 passed with­out any­one even be­seech­ing the rulers in Delhi or Sri­na­gar to tell us the truth: Who killed 35 Sikhs on March 20, 2000, in Chit­tis­ingh­pora, Kash­mir?

Who killed 35 Sikhs on March 20, 2000, in Chit­tis­ingh­pora, Kash­mir?

It is sur­pris­ing that the Sikh com­mu­nity has not asked this ques­tion, not even when it is call­ing for Pan­thic con­claves, hark­ing about hu­man rights or set­ting 24-hour dead­lines for the regime to re­lease wrongly ar­rested Sikh youth. Peo­ple in Kash­mir still ex­pect the com­mu­nity to re­visit the Brak­pora files.

Be­cause only if we asked that ques­tion will we be able to ask other re­lated ones: Who killed the five men af­ter they had gone miss­ing from Brar­i­ana­gan and Ha­lan, the vil­lages near Chit­tis­ingh­pora, on March 25, 2000?

The fact is that the com­mu­nity has­n’t en­gaged with its own bunch of Kash­mir Files for 23 years now.

As the state mounts an Am­rit­pal-shaped spec­ta­cle with every new video grab, and as Pun­jab’s YouTube jour­nal­ism goes ga ga over it, rustling ever more views and col­lect­ing YouTube dol­lars, the mes­sage go­ing out there is that the mi­nor­ity Sikh com­mu­nity has to do far more on the hu­man rights and civil lib­er­ties front.

Pun­jab, and the Panth in par­tic­u­lar, should be wor­ried about this nar­ra­tive be­cause it has never been found ab­sent from hu­man rights bat­tles. The Panth was there at the Sha­heen Bagh, it was there when Kash­miris were be­ing at­tacked, it raised its voice when the regime stormed the JNU, and it stood up for the lib­erty of Sudha Bharad­waj, Gau­tam Navlakha, and their fel­low com­rades.

The Panth now also needs to do more than merely track the move­ments of Am­rit­pal Singh and ‘shar­ing’ and ‘lik­ing’ YouTube jour­nal­is­m’s inani­ties. It must send a clear mes­sage to both – the ma­jori­tar­ian state and the mi­nor­ity com­mu­nity fac­ing the ire of the regime across the coun­try: We do care, and we will not be found AWOL. It starts by re­vis­it­ing our own very per­sonal Kash­mir Files.

The Panth now also needs to do more than merely track the move­ments of Am­rit­pal Singh and ‘shar­ing’ and ‘lik­ing’ YouTube jour­nal­is­m’s inani­ties.

As el­e­ments in not just the rad­i­cal fringe but even some of the mod­er­ate sec­tions of the com­mu­nity fall for a rather pe­cu­liar for­mu­la­tion – if “they” can de­mand a Hindu Rash­tra, then “we” can also de­mand a Sikh na­tion – the Panth should ask it­self some hard ques­tions about its si­lence on the Chatis­ingh­pora-Pathribal-Brak­pora Files.

March/​April is al­ways a great sea­son to ask those ques­tions.

In­ter­est­ingly, when Madeleine Al­right – at one time one of the most pow­er­ful women in the world who made an in­cred­i­ble jour­ney from be­ing once a child in war-torn Eu­rope and forced to flee her home, to be­com­ing the United States Sec­re­tary of State – died last year on March 23, The Kash­mir Files was still run­ning in the­atres across In­dia.

She was part of the Clin­ton ca­bal that bus­ied it­self fash­ion­ing a new world or­der and was a mute wit­ness to the Rwanda mas­sacre, but her death should have in­ter­ested the Sikh com­mu­nity in par­tic­u­lar since she wrote part of the Pan­th’s Kash­mir files. But we will come to that shortly af­ter we have sifted through the Sikhs’ Kash­mir files.

Sikhs should know that their Kash­mir files — the Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files, the Pathribal Files, and the Brak­pora Files — all carry the time stamp of “Spring of 2000 – Kash­mir.” In­dian his­tory pro­ject wrote these files within the pace of a fort­night dur­ing the sea­son Kash­miris call Sonth and Pun­jabis call Bas­ant.

Here are the three files, one by one, each blood­ied with gun­shots, lies, de­cep­tions, and state thug­gery.

The Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files —

Hours be­fore United States Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton was to land in New Delhi for his In­dia visit in March 2000, uniden­ti­fied gun­men in army fa­tigues lined up 36 Sikhs in front of two gur­d­waras in the re­mote South Kash­mir vil­lage of Chit­tis­ingh­pora that did not even have a phone. One es­caped with a gun wound, while 35 were killed.

It was the evening of March 20, 2000.

Clearly, some force was try­ing to send a mes­sage to Wash­ing­ton. Pak­istan said In­dian se­cu­rity forces were be­hind the mas­sacre be­cause In­dia wanted to de­fame Pak­istan, while the Va­j­payee gov­ern­ment claimed it was do­ing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mu­jahideen, both groups backed by Pak­istan.

Clin­ton was still in In­dia when the break­through came. A man called Yaqub Wa­gay, a Mus­lim res­i­dent of Chit­tis­ingh­pora had been caught. He had led the killers to the hap­less Sikhs. By all ac­counts, Clin­ton must have been mighty im­pressed.

If he was­n’t, he would have been a cou­ple of days later. Hours be­fore the then Union Home Min­is­ter L K Ad­vani was to visit the mas­sacre site on March 25, 2000, about 11 miles from Chit­tis­ingh­pora, in the vil­lage of Pan­chalthan, the army, and the J&K po­lice gunned down five LeT ter­ror­ists who, it said, were re­spon­si­ble for the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre of 35 Sikhs.

Ad­vani and then CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah were given a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion with help of site maps about how the op­er­a­tion was car­ried out.

The Patharibal Files —

Mean­while, some­thing else had hap­pened. Five men had gone miss­ing from two neigh­bour­hood vil­lages, Brar­i­ana­gan and Ha­lan, and Anant­nag town. Their kin claimed they were taken away by army men in the mid­dle of the night.

While the gov­ern­ment had claimed that five LeT ter­ror­ists were killed in a five-hour-long gun bat­tle, vil­lagers were not aware of any such shootout.

Sus­pi­cion arose that the five killed in the en­counter and de­clared for­eign mil­i­tants could be the same five men ab­ducted from their houses by the army. A vil­lager from Pathribal, who saw the bod­ies of the men killed in the en­counter, recog­nised one of them as Jumma Khan, one of the ab­ducted men.

Anant­nag saw pro­ces­sions by rel­a­tives of the five miss­ing men. It be­came a ma­jor is­sue and the gov­ern­ment was forced to or­der a ju­di­cial en­quiry. There was no ex­pla­na­tion for why the five dead ter­ror­ists were buried in grave­yards miles apart from each other.

The Brak­pora Files —

Pro­tes­tors, un­sat­is­fied and an­gry, marched to­wards the deputy com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice on April 3, 2000, where CRPF and po­lice opened fire, killing nine of them. Some of the dead were close rel­a­tives of the five miss­ing vil­lagers.

As the crescendo of protest rose, the J&K gov­ern­ment sus­pended a cou­ple of po­lice of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing the dis­trict po­lice chief, and or­dered that the bod­ies of the five men killed in the en­counter be ex­humed and DNA sam­ples be ex­am­ined.

The Ex­humed Files —

On April 6-7, 2000, the days of ex­huma­tion, car­ried out in full pub­lic view, rel­a­tives nar­rated lists of what a par­tic­u­lar dead man was wear­ing, the kind of ring a de­ceased had on his fin­ger, or the watch on his wrist. Every sin­gle de­tail they told about those still buried six feet un­der turned out to be true.

Among many oth­ers, Muza­mil Jaleel of The In­dian Ex­press, a ster­ling jour­nal­ist known for his coura­geous writ­ings and a stick­ler to the ethics of the pro­fes­sion, was pre­sent at the ex­huma­tion site.

Nov­el­ist, es­say­ist and award-win­ning au­thor Pankaj Mishra, who had reached Chit­tis­ingh­pora within a day of the mas­sacre of 35 Sikhs, de­scribes the ex­huma­tion thus:

“When the bod­ies were fi­nally ex­humed, al­most two weeks af­ter the mur­ders, they were dis­cov­ered to have been badly de­faced. The chopped-off nose and chin of one man—a lo­cal shep­herd—turned up in an­other grave. The body of a lo­cal sheep and buf­falo trader was head­less—the head could­n’t be found—but was iden­ti­fied by the trousers that were in­tact un­der­neath the army fa­tigues it had been dressed in. An­other charred corpse—that of an af­flu­ent cloth-re­tailer from the city of Anant­nag, pre­sum­ably kid­napped and killed be­cause he was, like the other four men, tall and well-built and could be made to re­sem­ble, once dead, a “for­eign mer­ce­nary”—had no bul­let marks at all. Re­mark­ably, for bod­ies so com­pletely burnt, the army fa­tigues that they were dressed in were al­most brand new.”

The DNA Files —

The truth about Patharibal was al­ready out, but ef­forts were made to cor­rupt the ev­i­dence. Muza­mil Jaleel re­ported how, on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2001, “the Hy­der­abad lab­o­ra­tory wrote to J&K Po­lice, say­ing that sam­ples sup­posed to be of a fe­male rel­a­tive of one of the vic­tims ac­tu­ally be­longed to a male.” Sim­i­larly, a sam­ple sup­posed to be of a fe­male rel­a­tive ac­tu­ally turned out to be the blood of two dif­fer­ent men. Ini­tially, the gov­ern­ment kept the scan­dal un­der wraps, but by the March of 2002, CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah told the J&K as­sem­bly that of­fi­cials had in­deed tam­pered with the DNA sam­ples.

The Barak­pora Fir­ing Probe Files —

Jus­tice S. R. Pan­dian Com­mis­sion, set up by the J&K Gov­ern­ment to in­quire into the Barak­pora fir­ing in­ci­dent in which nine peo­ple in­clud­ing rel­a­tives of Patharibal fake en­counter vic­tims were killed, in­dicted the se­cu­rity forces for “mur­der of peace­ful pro­tes­tors” and said these were clearly linked to the “faked en­counter killings in Pathribal”.

The Of­fi­cial Con­fes­sion Files —

The gov­ern­ment, through the then Deputy Com­mis­sioner of Anant­nag fi­nally ac­knowl­edged the Pathribal en­counter to be fake, con­ceded that vic­tims were “in­no­cent” and or­dered a grant of Rs 1 lakh as ex gra­tia re­lief to the next of their kin.

The DNA Tam­per­ing Files —

On March 15, 2002, an in­quiry into the tam­per­ing of DNA ev­i­dence was or­dered, and a se­nior doc­tor and oth­ers in­volved were sus­pended. Fresh sam­ples ex­am­ined by CFSL, Kolkatta es­tab­lished the truth be­hind the Pathribal fake en­counter. An in­quiry by Kuchai Com­mis­sion found that the foren­sic team and po­lice had fudged the DNA sam­ples.

The Milk­man Files —

The en­tire po­lice case was built upon a man called Mo­ham­mad Yousuf Wa­gay, who, the po­lice had told Ad­vani and the me­dia, had guided the “killers” to the vil­lage. His ar­rest within five days of the killings of 35 Sikhs was an­nounced in New Delhi in the full glare of the world’s cam­eras by none less than the Union Home Sec­re­tary Ka­mal Pan­day. It was on the leads pro­vided by this Wa­gay guy that the po­lice had en­gaged five “for­eign ter­ror­ists” in a 5-hour-long gun bat­tle, killing all of them.

Even­tu­ally, the Anant­nag Po­lice ex­on­er­ated Mo­ham­mad Yousuf Wa­gay af­ter months of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­duced the charge from Sec­tion 302 for be­ing an ac­com­plice in the mur­der of 35 Sikhs to try­ing to dis­turb breach the peace (CrPC 107/​151).

It was now clear that Wa­gay was framed, that the five men killed at Pathribal and dubbed as for­eign mil­i­tants were in­no­cent lo­cal vil­lagers ab­ducted from their homes.

The Kash­mir Files had turned very, very murky.

The In­quiry Files —

Seven months af­ter the killings of 35 Sikhs, CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah an­nounced a ju­di­cial com­mis­sion headed by Jus­tice Pan­dian. It was to in­quire into the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre as well as the Pathribal fake en­counter. The good judge had com­pleted his probe into the Brak­pora fir­ing and linked it to the Pathribal fake en­counter, but the CM had a change of heart and de­cided there was no need to probe Chit­tis­ingh­pora. Even­tu­ally, the Pathribal case went to the CBI in 2003 which took three years to fi­nally clinch that it was a fake en­counter and a “cold-blooded” plot by In­dian Army of­fi­cers.

Back to Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files —

No one ever probed Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacres. The CBI’s re­mit was lim­ited to Pathribal. The clear con­clu­sion is that no one wants to know the truth about Chit­tis­ingh­pora.

At one stage, se­cu­rity forces claimed to have ar­rested two Lashkar mil­i­tants Mo­ham­mad Suhail Ma­lik and Wasim Ahmed, both Pak­istani na­tion­als and recorded their dis­clo­sure about in­volve­ment in the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre. They were ac­quit­ted by the trial court, but the or­der was chal­lenged in the Delhi High Court which again ac­quit­ted them in May 2012.

Even­tu­ally, and silently, they were repa­tri­ated to Pak­istan. No one among the na­tion­al­ists, in­clud­ing those rec­om­mend­ing The Kash­mir Files movie as the his­tory of mil­i­tancy in the val­ley, made any noise.

* * *

No in­quilab can hap­pen with­out a de­ter­mi­na­tion to ask tough ques­tions of the pow­er­ful: “Who killed the 35 Sikhs in Chit­tis­ingh­pora?”

Pun­jab marks its tryst with Sha­heed Bha­gat Singh and vows to usher in an In­quilab every 23rd of March. No in­quilab can hap­pen with­out a de­ter­mi­na­tion to ask tough ques­tions of the pow­er­ful: “Who killed the 35 Sikhs in Chit­tis­ingh­pora?”

Ever since the mas­sacre, Kash­mir has re­mained agog with con­spir­acy talk. Much was pub­lished and talked about the lan­guage that the killers spoke, the names they used for each other, and how it did not have the hall­marks of acts car­ried out by Kash­miri ter­ror­ists.

In 2006, Madeleine Al­bright, the high­est-rank­ing woman in the his­tory of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment at the time when she was US Sec­re­tary of State (1997-2001), wrote a book called “The Mighty and the Almighty: Re­flec­tions on Amer­ica, God, and World Af­fairs.” In its fore­word, Bill Clin­ton wrote:

“Dur­ing my visit to In­dia in 2000, some Hindu mil­i­tants de­cided to vent their out­rage by mur­der­ing thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I had­n’t made the trip, the vic­tims would prob­a­bly still be alive. If I had­n’t made the trip be­cause I feared what re­li­gious ex­trem­ists might do, I could­n’t have done my job as pres­i­dent of the United States.”

When it be­came a mat­ter of con­tro­versy, the pub­lisher, Harper Collins, said the ref­er­ence to “Hindu mil­i­tants” will be re­moved in sub­se­quent print­ings. Clin­ton’s of­fice never com­mented on it.

Clin­ton’s Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, Strobe Tal­bott, who de­scribed his “four­teen meet­ings at ten lo­ca­tions in seven coun­tries on three con­ti­nents” with the then In­dian For­eign Min­is­ter Jaswant Singh in his book, “En­gag­ing In­dia,” also ex­pressed se­ri­ous Amer­i­can mis­giv­ings about the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre.

“From the mo­ment he got off the plane, Clin­ton spoke about “shar­ing the out­rage” of the In­dian peo­ple (but) did not en­dorse the ac­cu­sa­tion that Pak­istan was be­hind the vi­o­lence since the US had no in­de­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion,”  Tal­bott writes in his book.

The In­dian gov­ern­ment never picked up a quar­rel with Clin­ton, or  Al­bright, or Tal­bott.

The ap­par­ent er­ror was ag­gran­dized by Clin­ton’s re­fusal to ac­knowl­edge it, and ex­ac­er­bated by Pankaj Mishra’s book, “Temp­ta­tions of the West: How to be Mod­ern in In­dia, Pak­istan, Ti­bet and Be­yond”, where he re­peated the al­le­ga­tions against “Hindu Mil­i­tants” even af­ter the con­fes­sion of the Lashkar-e-Toiba mil­i­tant.

Pankaj Mishra weighs in on the is­sue of who killed the 35 Sikhs hours be­fore Clin­ton’s visit:

“The In­dian fail­ure to iden­tify or ar­rest even a sin­gle per­son con­nected to the killings or the killers, and the hasti­ness and bru­tal­ity of the In­dian at­tempt to stick the blame on “for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies” while Clin­ton was still in In­dia, only lends weight to the new and grow­ing sus­pi­cion among Sikhs that the mas­sacre in Chi­tis­ingh­pura was or­ga­nized by In­dian in­tel­li­gence agen­cies in or­der to in­flu­ence Clin­ton, and the large con­tin­gent of in­flu­en­tial Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists ac­com­pa­ny­ing him, into tak­ing a much more sym­pa­thetic view of In­dia as a help­less vic­tim of Is­lamic ter­ror­ists in Pak­istan and Afghanistan: a view of In­dia that some very hec­tic In­dian diplo­macy in the West had pre­vi­ously failed to achieve.” {Death in Kash­mir, by Pankaj Mishra, The New York Re­view, Sep­tem­ber 21, 2000 is­sue}  (https://​www.ny­books.com/​ar­ti­cles/​2000/​09/​21/​death-in-kash­mir/?​lp_txn_id=1338630)

We still do not know who killed the 35 Sikhs dur­ing that Bas­ant of 2000, but since we are cur­rently very busy ask­ing where is Am­rit­pal Singh and search­ing through a pile of CCTV video grabs and sundry un­re­li­able re­ports of his sight­ings, we might as well ex­pand our cu­rios­ity and ask: who killed 35 Sikhs in Chit­tis­ing­pora?

Also, the com­mu­nity needs to ask it­self why is it not in­ter­ested in re­vis­it­ing its own Kash­mir files.

When In­dia is learn­ing the his­tory of mil­i­tancy in Kash­mir from a movie and form­ing a nar­ra­tive about what hap­pened to mi­nori­ties in that Val­ley dom­i­nated by Mus­lims and seem­ingly in­fested by Po­lit­i­cal Is­lam’s ji­hadists, it is time to ask with a re­newed fer­vour the old ques­tions about dead Sikhs.

How else will The Pan­thic Kash­mir Files be com­pleted? The Sikh com­mu­nity must an­nex The Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files, The Pathribal Files, and The Brak­pora Files to In­di­a’s The Kash­mir Files. In­di­a’s Prime Min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, rec­om­mended ‘The Kash­mir Files’. It is time to re­turn the favour, and rec­om­mend the Pan­th’s own Kash­mir Files, un­less we are happy to live with stuff for­got­ten in the cob­webs of our col­lec­tive Pan­thic mem­ory and in­stead stay up to date with the lat­est state farce around the fig­ure of Am­rit­pal.

*****

When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the bat­tle’s lost and won.
— The sec­ond witch in Mac­beth
******

(SP Singh is a Chandi­garh-based se­nior jour­nal­ist and an­chor of a po­lit­i­cal weekly de­bate on tele­vi­sion, ‘Daleel with SP Singh’. His in­ter­ests en­com­pass pol­i­tics, arts, so­ci­ety, acad­e­mia, and yes, even trivia. He hardly plays ball with his co­hort of hacks but has the balls to write stuff like this.)