Hawal Massacre 21/May/1990

I saw people climbing unsuccessfully the fencing of a veterinary office. The CRPF men were targeting them as well. Several injured fell on me but, somehow I managed to hold my nerves. Then firing stopped finally, I saw CRPF men with their guns oozing smoke from the windows of the college building.They had taken positions along the wall of the college and I could see them in the bunker. After some time, the CRPF men came out of the college and began searching the pockets of the dead. They also removed earrings from the women martyrs.

When they left, the people of the area showed exemplary courage and started lifting the dead and injured in hand driven carts. The injured were taken to the hospital in carts. The CRPF posted at Saidapora stopped them saying ambulances were arriving.

The people waited for sometime for the ambulances. However no ambulances arrived and people marched ahead.

–Tahir Ahmad Baba, a witness to the blood-spattered incident that took place on this day 29 years ago outside Islamia College.      
  
Around 70 people were martyred during a course of 12-15 minutes. The firing started around 3:30pm and by 3:45pm there were dead bodies of men and women everywhere. There was also a pregnant lady among them. Walls were spattered with blood and heaps of    sandals and shoes lay on street unattended beside the lane of veterinary hospital; most of which belonged to the dead.  "The CRPF washed almost all the roads of Hawal locality just to erase their crime, but the atrocities committed by them were so magnanimous that even water they had used turned into blood.”
“Even water could not hide their crime. Keep killing aside they even looted us that day. Looting by the Indian armed forces was a norm those days. They took ear rings from the women who fell to their bullets, stole gold chains and rings from men folk who had died.  And then barged into our homes and whatever they could stole, they took it. I am a witness to all of their brutality. They first killed and then robbed us. It was a nightmare.”





        Hawal massacre: When forces blocked all roads and dead were ferried on handcarts.

LEST WE FORGET, Graffiti spotted somewhere in Lal Chowk, Srinagar. 


                

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