In days that followed Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat’s killing, blast outside family home, a confrontation at crematorium

These may be recollections from decades ago, but this week’s police raids at eight locations in Srinagar in connection with Sarla’s killing brought them back for the Bhat family.

A Kashmiri Pandit nurse at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute for Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Sarla was abducted from her hostel by JKLM militants on April 14, 1990, and her bullet-riddled body was found five days later in old Srinagar city.

The oldest of government school headmaster Shambu Nath Bhat’s three children, she was the family’s maternal figure, always looking out for her younger siblings and her cousins.

She had only one goal – to take care of her ageing parents and her family. To this end, she refused to tie the knot, instead choosing to work.

“I was hardly two or so years younger than her, and her siblings were not much younger than her either, but she was always a mother to us all,” Prediman, Sarla’s maternal cousin, said. “As her parents could not persuade her to marry, they would send Sarla to our home at Kokernag so that my mother could convince her. But she never budged.”

On April 14, 1990, Sarla had just finished her shift and was leaving the SKIMS main building when JKLF militants abducted her in a waiting vehicle, accusing her of being a police informer.

After her body was found, allegations of torture and sexual assault emerged.

“We visited her home in Anantnag after the body was found, and stayed the night,” Prediman said. “The next morning, an uncle and I were given the duty of collecting her ashes from the cremation ground while the rest of the family gathered their valuables so they could move to Jammu.”

Then, the blast occurred, and even before the dust could settle, the family was faced with another attack – this one at the cremation ground.

“At sunrise, when my uncle and I went to the cremation ground to collect the ashes, we came across a group of 100-150 youth who started hurling abuses. When we told them we had come to collect the ashes, they attacked us,” he said, adding that the family managed to gather a fistful of ashes and rush home.

The family left the Valley “with just a briefcase of documents and a bag of clothes”. The next day, his own family followed, and they have since remained in Jammu.