By Rishi Patodia-
On 29.07.2020, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has noticed a Public Interest Litigation filed by Ramesh Pandita who is also the coordinator of Global Kashiri Pandit Diaspora in which the petitioner has prayed the Hon’ble Court to set up an independent central agency to investigate the killing of Kasmiri Pandit Ajay Pandita whose death responsibility is taken by The Resistance Front.
Ajay Pandita was a Kashmiri Pandit and was also the sarpanch of Lukbawan village. And, The Resistance Front (TRF) is a terror organisation which owes up terror attacks in Kashmir, is an offshoot of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba and is also associated with other terror outfits such as Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed.
In the PIL filed by Ramesh Pandita, he has pleaded that,
“Even after mass killings of Kashmiri pandits in the 1989 and early 1990’s, the Jammu and Kashmir police failed to act at that time and due to their inactiveness, no accused was prosecuted for the same. The inactiveness of Jammu and Kashmir Police shows their apathy towards the Kashmiri Pandit community”.
Also before the murder of Ajay Pandita, he himself had warned about danger to his life in December, 2020 during an interview to a news outlet, Mercury Times. In the interview, he had said that,
“I ask the UT administration, do they know Ajay [Pandita] Bharti? Have they met the Panch and Sarpanch in Kashmir? We get elected. We get killed. They will say the ground situation is good. When I am not safe, how can I say that others are safe?”
In the Pleading he has stated that if the Jammu and Kashmir Police conducts the investigation, then there will not be any findings and the investigation will get botched up along with tampering of the evidence. The reason to contend this is that during the 1990’s massacre of killing the Kasmiri Pandits, no proper investigation took place due to which no trial and conviction had happened.
Besides this, another reason is that a criminal writ petition moved earlier on the issue was dismissed as withdrawn by the petitioner.
Therefore the present PIL has prayed for,
“Urgent CBI Probe along with a Judicial Inquiry should be ordered by this Hon’ble Court for securing the justice to the victim’s family and the Kashmiri Pandit community” The petitioner has filed this PIL through advocate Siddharth Acharya and Advocate Pranjal Singh. And the hearing took place at two judge bench of Jammu and Kashmir High Court before Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Sanjay Dhar.