The Ganie family is not unfamiliar with security forces knocking on their door at odd hours – especially after their 26-year-old son joined the ranks of Kashmiri militants two years ago.
But on the night of April 25, something seemed amiss.
“The Army came around 12.30 in the night and asked us to take shelter in the local mosque,” said Aisha Begum, a resident of Mutalhama village in Kulgam district. “Initially, we thought they had come to search the house. But [we realised] that they had already moved our neighbours out of their homes. We were the last to be evacuated.”
Around two hours later, they heard a huge blast. When the first light broke on April 26, the Ganie family’s mud-and-brick house was rubble. “What we are wearing is the only thing we could retrieve,” Begum said.
Two days before, a group of terrorists had gunned down 25 tourists and a Kashmiri on the Baisaran meadows in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.
The Pahalgam strike was the deadliest attack on tourists in Kashmir’s history. By targeting tourists, security officials in Kashmir told Scroll, “terrorists had crossed a red line”.
The attack prompted massive anti-militancy operations across Kashmir Valley along with a crackdown on the families of militants, former overground workers of militant groups and those with a record of involvement in militancy.
Begum’s son Zakir Ahmad Ganie, who was a construction labourer before he became a militant, brought his family on the radar. His two elder brothers, uncle and a cousin were detained on the evening of the terror strike in Pahalgam – and his parents’ home razed.
Demolishing the house of an accused without any legal procedure violates international and Indian laws. In November, the Supreme Court had observed that razing the homes of individuals for their alleged involvement in crimes amounts to “collective punishment”, which is not permissible under the Constitution.
Moreover, Zakir Ganie has not been named as an accused by any security agency in the attack on the Baisaran meadow.
While detentions are common after attacks, the demolition of homes of militants’ families is a first in the history of Kashmir’s 36-year-old insurgency.
On April 24, two days after the Pahalgam attack, the security forces blasted the home of the family of Lashkar-e-Taiba militant Adil Ahmad Thoker.
Thoker has been named by the Jammu and Kashmir police as one of the accused in the Pahalgam attack. The same night, the home belonging to the family of another militant Asif Ahmad Sheikh was demolished at Mongahama village in south Kashmir’s Tral area.
Sheikh was not named as an accused in the Pahalgam attack. He had joined the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group around three years ago.
By the morning of April 27, security forces had used explosives to bring down at least nine houses belonging to the families of militants. Two of them are based in Pakistan.
The demolitions were spread across four districts of South Kashmir – Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam and Shopian – and two districts in North Kashmir.
‘How is this justified?’
In Mutalhama, there was a sense of resignation mixed with despair. Nevertheless, members of Zakir Ganie’s family questioned the government action. “We didn’t ask him to join militancy,” said Rukaiya Bano, Zakir’s sister. “He just left for work one day and never returned. Had we been supporters of his decision, this was justified. But how justified is it to punish us when we don’t even know if he is alive or dead?”
Bano said they are not opposed to the government holding her brother accountable for his acts. “If he’s alive, let them punish him, jail him or kill him,” she said. “But they should also give us justice.”
Once a carpet weaver, Ghulam Mohideen Ganie has battled poverty all his life. None of his three sons completed their education and went on to become daily labourers. The family does not own any land.
In Kashmir, traditionally, the family inheritance is usually distributed among siblings after they are married or after the death of the parents. Since most militants choose not to marry, their property is shared among their siblings after their deaths.
Zakir Ganie’s share would have hardly been a little more than one-fourth of the home that Ghulam Ganie built. Yet, the entire family’s property came in the line of fire.
With their home destroyed, the Ganie family now lives in the home of another son that is still under construction. “We cook outside in the open compound and sleep inside,” Bano said. “There are no doors and we use wooden planks at night to prevent dogs from entering.”
The family stares at a long struggle to build a new home. “My father had built this house through his daily labour work,” said Rukaiya Bano. “Now, he has to start everything anew.”
The distress of families has led the Kashmiri political leadership to urge the Centre to make a distinction between the culprits and their families.
“The Government of India must tread with caution and carefully distinguish between terrorists and civilians following the recent Pahalgam attack,” Mehbooba Mufti, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and chief of Peoples Democratic Party, tweeted on April 27.
She added: “There are reports of thousands being arrested and scores of houses of common Kashmiris being demolished along with those of militants. Appeal Government to direct the authorities to take care that innocent people are not made to feel the brunt as alienation aids terrorists[sic) goals of division and fear.”
‘A message’
Not surprisingly, neither the Jammu and Kashmir Police nor the Army have issued any official statement about their role in the demolitions. However, they have not denied reports of their involvement in the demolitions, either.
Scroll spoke to several security officials to understand the seemingly disproportionate reaction against the families of militants.
“Foreign terrorists have nothing to lose here. They have come here to die,” explained a senior police official in Kashmir, who declined to be identified. “But it’s very important to understand that foreign terrorists cannot survive without a local support ecosystem.”
Therefore, the message has to go out to the local support structure, the officer said.
In the past, too, security agencies in Jammu and Kashmir have come down heavily on people who support militant groups.
From using the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act to seize properties of those who have sheltered militants, burying dead militants in remote areas to ensure quiet funerals and banning separatist voices, the government has made sure that the cost of supporting militancy has risen enormously in Jammu and Kashmir since its special status under the Constitution was revoked in August 2019.
In rare cases, authorities have demolished properties of militants, claiming that they were built on state land.
A second police officer in Kashmir told Scroll that given the scale and unpredictability of the Pahalgam attack, the authorities had to respond in a way that had not been seen earlier. “Tourists have rarely been targeted by militants in the past,” he said. “From the security perspective, our focus remains high on pilgrims because there’s a history of terrorist attacks on them.”
He added: “The demolitions cannot be a policy but it conveys the message that this can be the cost of becoming or helping a terrorist. There’s a symbolism to it.”
In the opinion of a third police officer, such a drastic measure is going to be a “litmus test” for local recruitment in militancy. “Anyone who imagines himself as a militant now knows what his choice can mean for his family,” the officer said.
However, the officer conceded that measures viewed as “collective punishment” could go either way. “It’s a 50-50 situation,” he said. “Either the local militancy will die down or it will come back.”
While the demolitions have shocked many, the security forces are also wary of retaliations.
According to police officials, militant propaganda in the aftermath of the demolitions has been scathing in its criticism of the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
Those who lost their homes to demolitions have alleged that the Army officials who detonated explosives were accompanied by the police.
“We are getting inputs about their retaliation but we are ready,” said the third police officer.
That threat cannot be taken lightly, given the bloody history of militants targeting off-duty soldiers and police officials in Kashmir. Unlike Army or other paramilitary forces, Jammu and Kashmir Police staffers are deeply entrenched in Kashmiri society. Most of the force is Muslim and from the union territory.
In September 2018, Kashmir was rattled by a series of abductions of relatives and family members of police officials in south Kashmir. The abductions had coincided with the arrest of then Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naikoo’s father.
Many within the police had believed that the abductions were carried out at the behest of Naikoo to pressure the police not to harass the families of militants. The kidnapped were set free by the militants, but the abductions had caused major embarrassment for the security establishment in the valley.
However, the third police officer said the current situation is different. “That was a time when we had stone-pelting everywhere,” he said. “The environment was totally against the state, local recruitment was high. That kind of atmosphere is not there now. The recruitment is low and the security forces have an upper hand.”
The collateral damage
The demolitions have not just hurt the families of active militants, but in some cases their neighbours too.
The damage to other houses was extensive in Murran village of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
On April 25, security forces brought down the three-storeyed home of the family of active militant Ahsan Ul Haq Sheikh, which is located in a congested neighbourhood. Sheikh has not been accused of involvement in the Pahalgam terror strike.
According to the residents and neighbours, one blast was not enough to bring the structure down so, explosives were detonated twice.
“The second blast was massive and it damaged at least 16 houses in the neighbourhood,” said an affected houseowner in Murran, who declined to be identified.
A police officer in Pulwama said the authorities have assessed the damage to the neighbouring houses and the owners will be compensated.
With neighbours also at the receiving end of the “punishment”, the families of active militants were left mortified. “If they had to demolish my house, why didn’t they bring it down by a bulldozer?” asked Aisha Begum in Mutalhama, Kulgam. “We are not able to look into the eyes of our neighbours.”
‘They have unleashed a storm’
Whenever security forces would raid Mohammad Shafi Dar’s house or village in search of his militant son, he would often repeat a request to them.
“I had told the Army and the police that whenever you find my son or whenever he’s trapped in some cordon, inform me and I will walk through the bullets and make him surrender,” said Dar, a farmer in his mid-40s.
His 19-year-old son, Adnan Shafi Dar, joined militancy in October last year. Dar remembers the day vividly.
“It was October 18,” he said. “the day before he went missing, he complained of back pain and said he would visit Anantnag to see a doctor. The next morning, he left for Anantnag wearing slippers. That was the last time we saw him.”
At the time, Adnan Dar was in his first year of college. “Tell me, would any parent deliberately send his child to become a militant – whose end we all know?” asked Dar.
Police records allege that Adnan Dar was involved in the killing of a labourer from Bihar in Shopian in October, 2024.
On the evening of April 26, Army and police officials moved Dar’s family and neighbours out of their homes in Shopian’s Wandina village. Dar heard the sound of explosives bringing down his two-storeyed concrete house.
His wife and four daughters have taken shelter under a makeshift tent put up in the compound of a neighbouring house, which also suffered damage. His second son, Adnan’s brother, has been in police custody since the Pahalgam attack.
“They have unleased a storm on me,” Dar rued. “Sometimes, I think, the only option for me is suicide. The forces should have lined up all six of us and shot us dead.”
Photographs by Safwat Zargar.
