The Jammu and Kashmir State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened the investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre, in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits were killed, as part of a determined push to resolve long-pending cases of targeted killings from the peak years of militancy in the Valley.
23 Kashmiri Pandits killed in Wandhama aassacre
Sources confirmed that the SIA recently conducted raids at multiple locations in the Kashmir Valley in connection with the massacre. The attack wiped out nearly the entire non-migrant Pandit presence in the village, with only one teenage survivor. The case had remained unresolved for nearly three decades despite an FIR being registered at Ganderbal police station. The retired judge had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death. Justice Ganjoo was gunned down at Hari Singh Street in Srinagar by suspected terrorists.
On the night of January 25, 1998 — the eve of Republic Day and during Shab-e-Qadr in the holy month of Ramzan — heavily armed terrorists entered the homes of the remaining Kashmiri Pandit families in Wandhama village of Ganderbal district. They gunned down 23 people, including nine women and four children. The second is the November 4, 1989, killing of Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, also referred to as Ganju.
The renewed focus on these unsolved terror cases aligns with the repeated assurances of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha that every terror victim’s family will receive justice. Sinha has consistently emphasised that the long wait for accountability and rehabilitation is ending.
He has stated that the administration is committed to ensuring every eligible terror-affected family receives support, that pending cases will be investigated to hold perpetrators accountable, and that “we will not rest until justice reaches every family,” LG Sinha has said.
