Barely any people are visible in Jora Farm, a village of more than 1,000 residents, in Jammu district. The air is filled with the stench of damp, charred wood. Gusts of wind kick up ash and sawdust. A lonely slide in the school playground slopes down to a small crater formed by a mortar bomb.
The village is a few hundred meters from the India-Pakistan border in Jammu district’s Ranbir Singh Pura area. The exchange of fire between the armies of the two countries between May 18 and 23 has destroyed more than two dozen mud homes and animal shelters here. The people of the village have evacuated in terror for the second time since January.
According to residents of the border areas, the fresh spell of firing started on Friday, May 18, just two days after New Delhi announced a unilateral ceasefire against militants in the Kashmir Valley.
India and Pakistan had signed a border ceasefire agreement in 2003, which has been breached several times, with 2017 being one of the worst years. In Jammu, district officials say the scale and intensity of the latest round of ceasefire violations is unprecedented. According to Arun Manhas, additional district commissioner in Jammu, about one lakh civilians from more than 100 vulnerable villages, all in Jammu district, were displaced in the course of six days. Ten civilians and one security personnel have also lost their lives. Though ceasefire violations have occurred at the Line of Control as well, much of the damage has been inflicted in villages close to the international border in Jammu.
On the Pakistani side, Dawn reported one death in cross-border firing on May 15 – before the ceasefire declaration – but there do not seem to be reports about any damage or casualties subsequently.
Though there has been a respite in cross-border shelling since May 23, police officials posted in the border areas are worried. Pakistani shells, police officials said, are inching closer to densely populated town centres. “They have also started shelling during the crucial times of the day, when the hustle-bustle is maximum,” a police official said. “It shows their intentions: to target civilians and cause chaos.”
Indiscriminate shelling
Liyaqat Ali Boken has mapped in his memory the sites of explosions in Jora Farm. On Friday, May 18, he escaped unhurt when a bomb exploded close to him. Pieces of shrapnel, however, pierced his brother’s stomach. His brother is now in hospital.
The mortar shelling, said Boken, was “behisaab”. Indiscriminate. “There is not a single house here that has not been hit,” he said. “They did not even spare the masjid. It was hit by shells two times. These zaalim [cruel] Pakistanis don’t even honour the month of Ramzan.”
Jora Farm seems haunted. A solitary, abandoned, watch post can be seen in the backdrop of the village. Because of the shelling, 55-year-old Nazir Hussain’s home here does not have a roof or windows, and its walls are crumbling. But he locked the door of his home before he left along with other village residents for migrant camps established in Chakhroi, about 5 km away from the border. “Where do we go from here,” he asked. Besides his home, he has lost a part of his flock of buffaloes, and two animal shelters to the shelling. “We only have the clothes we are wearing,” he rued. “The government does not seem to think about us.”
The bustling border town of Arnia, with a population of 10,000, is badly hit. Police officials posted here say that the police received the maximum number of distress calls on May 18. “Our phones would continuously ring with distress messages and calls,” said a police official in the town. “Pakistan has started targeting towns. Casualties may be higher in the future as there are more people in smaller spaces here.”
According to the official, on the evening of May 22, within a span of 10 minutes, at least 43 mortar shell explosions rocked the town. “The [nearby] fields are littered with unexploded shells,” he said. “There is no count of how many shells were dropped on us. One exploded inside the police station, injuring our sentry.”
The same day, in Arnia’s Rangpur Trewa village, two civilians were killed. Sat Pal, a father of four, was killed at the gate of his home. The explosion kiled another man nearby. “The shelling started at 9.40 am,” said Juginder Pal, the brother of Sat Pal. “I think about 200-250 shells were fired.” Residents of the village likened the situation to the Kargil War years almost 20 years ago. Pal said that though cross-border shelling was an annual occurrence, this time it was different. “After the war, this is the first time shelling is being done during the day,” he said.
Later, on the night of May 25, another casualty would occur in the remote village of Serai Pillai. Though the village did not witness as intense shelling, a stray bullet from small arms fire directed at an Indian post atop a mountain hit the eight-month-old son of Gopal Das, a daily wage worker. The family was sleeping in the open when, at 11 pm, his baby started crying. “When his mother held him, her hands got soaked in blood,” said Das. “Then we saw the entire bedding was soaked in blood. We did not know what had happened.”
Serai Pillai does not have any mobile phone connectivity so Das could not call for help. Instead, he had to run 3 km to the home of a person who owns one of the village’s two vehicles. “It took me 45 minutes to reach him,” said Das. “He took another hour to get ready. And it took us 2 hours more to reach the hospital.” His son died on the way there. The next morning villagers found a bullet lodged in the mattress the child was sleeping on. It had passed through the baby’s stomach.
A new normal
As ceasefire violations become increasingly frequent, border residents seem to have normalised the current situation. The police officer in Arnia expressed his surprise at seeing villagers refusing to take shelter during spells of shelling. “On our way to rescue operations, we would find farmers going about normally to their fields to cut leaves,” he said. “We had to force them to turn away. It has become normal for them now.”
Back in Jora Farm, on May 26, 75-year-old Sher Ali was one of the few men still living in the desolate village. He said that he has to protect his family’s precious belongings: water pumps, utensils, bedding, and a few sheep skins. “This is home,” he said. “What will we do without our belongings, where will go with them?” The village has seen similar destruction of life and property for the last three years. In 2015, two young men from the village were killed in mortar shelling.
Sitting on a chair outside his single-room concrete house, his back turned to his five mud houses that were gutted during the May 18 shelling, Ali quietly read the Quran ahead of iftar, the meal eaten by Muslims to break their day-long fast during Ramzan.
“What wrong have we done to Pakistan?” he asked later, bitterly. “We toil for our bread, built our homes and they [Pakistan] took away everything from us in just minutes. If this Gujjar village is destroyed, [God] will destroy five villages in Pakistan.”
At the Chakhroi migrant camps, more than a dozen families from Jora Farm live in small tiled halls, with no privacy. A corner of the hall serves as the kitchen. Bombs have exploded even here, a few hundred meters from the camps.
In one of the halls, Liyaquat Ali, a social worker and one of the few literate people in Jora Farm village, said the shelling began early in the morning, when Muslims wake up for an early breakfast ahead of the day’s fasting. “But it was from our side,” he said. “To relieve the under attack posts in Arnia and other areas, they start shelling from this side.”
The vast fields of Arnia are famous for its fragrant basmati rice. But sowing the crop this year – sowing starts in June – comes with its risks. “People die in the village where there are concrete houses to take shelter,” said Vachan Lal, a 75-year-old farmer in Rangpur Trewa village. “Where do we hide ourselves in the fields?”
Yet, many have decided to ignore the shelling. “They [Pakistan] don’t want us to sow the crops,” said Darshan Lal, a retired serviceman. “It is a routine now, there is no point halting work...Everyone here who works in the fields, does so putting their lives on the line.”
A death sentence
The residents say it would help if the government was more sensitive to their needs. They say the government’s callousness has contributed to the casualties and is also responsible for the difficulties they face in their everyday lives. For instance, villagers in Serai Pillai say the presence of communication facilities in the village could have saved Gopal Das’s son’s life. “There are no doctors at the health centre and no phones to call anyone,” rued Das. A neighbour added: “Ministers came here and mocked us with their statements. They come for votes that we give them. Yet, we are left to fend for ourselves.”
Two kilometers from Rangpur Trewa, in Changia village, which is less than 1 km from the border, villagers voice similar views. Besides braving the shelling, residents of Changia also have to suffer due to the indifference of the local administration. “We need repair works and desilting of the canals to irrigate our fields in the coming days but because of the shelling no government official comes here,” said Raghuveer Singh, the village’s most recent sarpanch.
Singh blamed the government for abandoning its responsibilities. “Pakistan has to play mischief, it is their nature,” he said. “The real problem is that our government is not doing its job. They promised us relief and rehabilitation, upgradation of schools and health centre. But none of that has happened.”
“It is a death sentence,” said Singh, of life in the border villages. “We do not know when the bombs will fall on us. When will it claim our lives. We are all just waiting for our fates.”
