A day after a CRPF trooper was shot dead by militants hiding in a house in Pulwama, strong smell of chemicals pervade the burnt house, of which not much is left to salvage.
Its walls are covered with soot and dust. Household goods, badly mangled and singed, lay scattered from room to room. A day before Bashir Ahmad’s house in ChinarBagh on the edge of the Pulwama town was just like any normal home. Today the government forces, looking for militants, have reduced it to a pile of smoking debris, leaving the family with no roof over their heads.
On Friday night, a large number of government forces lay a cordon around the theChinarBagh locality and began searching for what they said were militants hiding in the area. When they reached Ahmad’s home they told the family to come out of the house, Ahmad said.
After searching the home and other houses standing next to it, they found nothing in them. Eventually the family was allowed to go back inside and troopers left, according to Ahmad.
He said that after an hour militants hiding somewhere in the locality fired on the soldiers and in the exchange of fire one CRPF man was killed. The militants, however, vanished in the dark.
Ahmad said that when the shooting died down, the government forces came back to his front door. When the door was opened a trooper pointed his gun towards Ahmad’s young son. Desperate to save his son, Ahmad came in the way between his son and the trooper, taking a gunshot in his shoulder.
Bleeding from the wound, Ahmad all by himself ran towards the local hospital in the dark. He passed out when he came near to the hospital. Before he lost his consciousness he made a call to one of his relations and that might have saved his life. He is now being treated for the gunshot wound in Srinagar’s Bone and Joint Hospital.
“We shifted him to hospital around 12.30 AM. He was lying unconscious on the road,” said one of the Ahmad’s relatives.
The ordeal of the Ahmad’s family did not stop here. The soldiers appeared again. They took his wife, daughter and son out and set the house on fire after sprinkling some chemical on it, said a relative of Ahmad’s on the condition of anonymity as feared reprisals.
“We could not salvage anything. Everything—furniture, clothes jewellery and some hard cash—everything went up in flames,” said Ahmad’s brother Mohammad Yousuf, whose house was partially damaged as soldiers also tried to burn it down.
On Saturday morning dozens of people had come to the neighbourhood to take a look at the burnt home. Soon, youngsters began to go around and collect the money from visitors to help the family rebuild their home, a sight too common now in Kashmir where impromptu gestures of kindness like this have brought out the compassionate side of the people of Kashmir.
THE POLICE, HOWEVER, SAID IN A STATEMENT:
“As soon as the search party approached towards the suspect house the militants hiding there fired indiscriminately due to which the house owner Bashir Ahmad sustained injuries. In the initial exchange of fire a CRPF soldier identified as JD Mandeep Kumar was injured who later succumbed to his injuries,” a police hand out said. The police said the militants fled in the dark.