Srinagar, August 25: After 28 years, the State Investigation Agency (SIA) of Jammu and Kashmir has reopened the investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre, where 23 Kashmiri Pandits were killed in Ganderbal district.
The SIA stated that it is revisiting several cases related to the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley, including the Wandhama incident. Officials aim to identify the terrorists and their accomplices involved in this heinous crime.
On January 25, 1998, terrorists invaded the homes of Kashmiri Pandit families in Wandhama village, resulting in the deaths of 23 individuals, including nine women and four children.
On the eve of Republic Day, a group of terrorists dressed in army uniforms entered the village, engaged with the community, and then ordered Pandit families to gather in one place before opening fire.
The victims belonged to four families who had remained in the valley despite the rise of militancy in the early 1990s. Although an FIR was filed at the Ganderbal police station, the case remained unresolved for nearly three decades.
Authorities revealed that the massacre was carried out by terrorists linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Reopening the Wandhama case is part of efforts to reinvestigate unresolved terrorist cases and bring the guilty to justice. Additionally, the SIA has also resumed investigations into the murders of Tika Lal Taploo and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, both of which occurred in 1989.
Taploo, a prominent lawyer and vice president of the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir, was shot dead near his home in Srinagar in September 1989. Justice Ganjoo, who sentenced the founder of JKLF, Maqbool Bhatt, to death, was murdered by suspected JKLF terrorists on November 4, 1989, on Hari Singh Street.
Officials reported that the SIA has conducted raids at multiple locations in Jammu and Kashmir as part of these renewed investigations. The agency has also completed its investigation into the 1990 murder of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhatt, filing a 737-page charge sheet naming the banned JKLF leader Yasin Malik as the main accused in her abduction and murder.
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