SRINAGAR: J&K State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened the investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre of 23 people as part of a wider push to probe the killings of Kashmiri Pandits during the peak of militancy in the Valley.According to sources, SIA has also started a probe into the killings of prominent Kashmiri Pandit advocate-politician Tika Lal Taploo and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo.On Jan 25, 1998, armed terrorists entered the homes of Kashmiri Pandit families in Wandhama village of Ganderbal district and gunned down 23 people. The case still remains unresolved, but SIA sources in said it will see “substantial progress soon”.Officials said SIA has undertaken a focused and comprehensive investigation into the decades-old cases to bring each of these to a logical conclusion in accordance with law. “Concerted efforts are being made to uncover the circumstances and conspiracies underlying these cases, establish credible evidence, and identify those responsible strictly on the basis of substantiated evidence and witness testimony,” said an official.Taploo, a prominent lawyer and then vice-president of J&K BJP, was shot dead near his residence in Srinagar in Sept 1989, in what among the first targeted killings of prominent Kashmiri Pandits as terrorism took roots in the Valley. Justice Ganjoo, who had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death, was shot dead on Nov 4, 1989 in Srinagar.On Aug 12, SIA carried out searches at nine locations across J&K in connection with the killing of Kashmiri Pandit poet and writer Sarvanand Kaul Premi and his son by terrorists. Premi, 66, and his younger son Verinder were shot dead in Anantnag in south Kashmir on May 1, 1990, a day after they were abducted from their village.
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Their bodies were later found hanging from a tree. Five days later, the grief-stricken Kaul family left Kashmir, never to return.Earlier on June 29, SIA filed a 737-page chargesheet in connection with the killing of Sarla Bhat, 27, a nurse at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences. She was abducted by terrorists from the SKIMS hostel on April 18, 1990, tortured and shot dead. Her bullet-riddled body was recovered the next day.
