Author: Pradeep Dutta
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 18, 2002
URL: http://www.meadev.nic.in/news/clippings/20020218/ie.htm
In the last two months, 25 children,
mostly under ten, were slaughtered
''Aj to baad terey bachey nahin
darengey (From today onwards your children will not fear the knock on the
doors),'' militants told Mithu Ram, killing four of his family members,
including two daughters aged eight and 12. These words continue to haunt
him even now.
Yet another tragic chapter in the
life of a father in Jammu and Kashmir, who will mourn his young ones throughout
his life.
Militants dressed in Pathani suits
and speaking in Gojri, killed eight members of two Hindu families in Narla
village today. Ram's was one of them.
In the past two months, the militants
have snuffed out lives of 25 children, many of them before their tenth
birthday. The number is more than any other year since militancy raised
its head in the state. ''The year 2002 seems to have come with a bad omen
for children of the state,'' said a senior security force officer looking
at the injured toddlers in hospital.
Earlier, in January this year, eight
children were killed by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants in Mendhar tehsil
of Poonch district. They did not even spare a pregnant woman.
Before this the militants had opened
fire on a child, who in order to save his father a village sarpanch, had
clung to him.
Sitting outside the trauma ward
of the GMC Hospital in Jammu, Mithu with blood splattered all over his
shirt, looks at her convalescing three-year-old daughter.
Unmindful of the bullet wound on
his arm, Mithu tells every passerby: ''the militants were right, now onwards
my children will never fear the knock on the door. As they are no more
to hear that.''
On one of the beds is another family's
story. Papal, a three-year-old girl has been admitted with bullet wounds
on her arm and chest. She is still not aware that her mother Shakuntala
and two sisters were also killed, while her father sustained serious injuries.
The little girl had clung to the
chest of her dead mother the entire night, recalls her cousin Ashok. Her
one-and-a-half-old sister died in the Shakuntala's lap. Papal survived
as the mother fell on her after being hit by bullets. Thus, only a few
bullets could reach her.
''In fact when the chopper came
to evacuate the injured, Papal was not ready to go. She insisted on taking
her mother along,'' said a tearful Ashok.
When militants knocked at the door
of Mithu's house in the night, the family was fast asleep. As they pointed
guns at the sleeping children, Mithu's wife Jatti fell at their feet praying
for mercy on the children.
''Inhan ney kujh wi nahin dekhya,
inhan no na maro (They have yet to see the world, don't kill them),'' Jatti
is said to have told militants.
Mithu said these words hardly had
any affect on them. The militants, without a second thought, shot his wife
and the children.Now attending to their injured kin, Mithu and the others
fear that the gunman are still around in their village and if security
is not given to them the militants might return.
