Pandits warned against return to J&K

Assurances given by the Hurriyat will not protect Pandits, militants warned.

Trying to put a dampener on the Hurriyat's efforts to bring Kashmiri Pandits back to the Valley, four Pakistan-based militant groups on Friday warned the migrants against doing so as they had "deserted" the majority community "during the hour of crisis".

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Accusing the Pandits of helping then J&K Governor Jagmohan "implement his heinous plans" by migrating in the 1990s, they said, "we impose a ban on the return of Kashmiri Pandit migrants to the Valley."

"Exchanging garlands with leaders of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference cannot absolve them. The childish assurances handed out by the Hurriyat will not protect them," a joint spokesman for Al-Nasireen, Al-Arifeen, Save Kashmir Movement and Fazandan-e-Millat said in a faxed statement.

In a landmark exercise on Wednesday, the Hurriyat moderate group, led by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, held talks with Pandit leaders here in a bid to initiate their return to the Valley. Two leading Pandit groups Kashmiri Samiti and Panun Kashmir stayed away from the meeting.

"There is a complete ban on the return of Pandits," said a joint statement from four Kashmiri Muslim rebel groups.

It isn't known how many Pandits are seeking to return to the Valley, but more than 250,000 locked their homes and fled soon after the militancy erupted in December 1989.