u/AggravatingRisk2669

Girija Tickoo was a 21 year old Kashmiri Pandit woman and mother of two small children. She worked as a laboratory assistant in a government school in Bandipora Kashmir. In early 1990 when most Pandits fled the valley due to targeted killings and threats by "those" militants she moved to Jammu with her family. Later she received a call that it was safe to return and collect her pending salary. She went back to Bandipora in June 1990 to get the money.She collected her salary but was abducted by a group of militants including people she knew. They gang raped her for several days and tortured her brutally. While she was still alive they took her to a sawmill and cut her body into two pieces with a mechanical saw. Her dismembered body was dumped on the roadside. This happened in front of complete local silence and indifference. Her husband and children became refugees. No real justice was ever delivered.

In 1990, Sarla Bhat, 27, was working as a staff nurse at Srinagar’s SKIMS hospital to support her family, even as fear forced her community to flee.

On April 15, 1990, Sarla was abducted from her hostel. For four agonizing days, JKLF terrorists subjected her to brutal torture and sexual assault. When her body was dumped in Mallabagh on April 19, her killers had carved the acronym "JKLF" directly into her flesh from a knife.

The horror continued for her family. When Sarla’s bullet-ridden body returned to Anantnag, the neighborhood was already a ghost town emptied by the exodus. Marooned and helpless, the grieving family could not find enough people to carry her to a funeral pyre. As they attempted her final rites, a grenade was hurled at their home. This targeted terror forced the last remaining Hindu families to flee.

Systemic apathy followed. Though a police complaint was filed in 1990, the file was buried. It took until 2025 for a Special Investigation Agency to reopen the case, naming four terrorists. Two are dead, one is absconding, and one is imprisoned: Yasin Malik, who was once pampered as a Damaad by New Delhi, invited to the high table as one of the esteemed "stakeholders in the Kashmir peace talks." Yesterday, chargesheet was filed in this case.

Sarla’s case is not isolated. Thousands of women faced similar brutality in Kashmir during the late 1980s and 1990s, leaving behind stories that have been completely erased from the records today.