The border residents of Poonch, especially in the forward villages of Shahpur area have been living life on the ‘razor’s edge’ for the past couple of days.
After the heightened tensions between the neighbouring Armies of India and Pakistan the danger is lurking in every nook and corner of the inhospitable terrain. Poor road network and absence of safety bunkers have further compounded the miseries of hapless villagers constantly living under the ‘shadow of death’.
On the occasion of Eid when the Pakistani Army rained bullets and lobbed long-range mortars, several village houses in Qasba, Ganutrian, Kerni, Mandhar areas of Poonch were hit hard and borne the brunt of heavy firing.
According to rough estimates at least a dozen houses were affected in the heavy firing. Some of the villagers who have gone to Poonch to offer Eid prayers could not return home as they were left stranded due to heavy firing.
“Our family members were worried for our safety and we were equally worried for them.We were feeling helpless and could not unite with our loved ones when they needed us the most”, said Mohd Junaid.
Five villagers, including three women injured in the cross border firing faced many hardships as it took them more than four hours to reach district hospital in Poonch due to poor road conditions.
Heavy rainfall and diversions engineered by local residents to save their residential houses from flood water have resulted in washing away of small patches of road in forward areas of Shahpur.
In the absence of bunkers constructed in the forward villages the poor people have no place to take shelter. Mohd Riaz of Village Qasba said,”we have been urging the army and the state govt to allow us to construct safety bunkers so that we can take shelter and save our lives but we have not been allowed to even do that. We are living in the direct line of fire and we have been deprived of basic infrastructure support for last so many decades”, he added.
The villagers claimed local Army units prevent them from constructing bunkers in the area. Since many of these forward villages are traditional routes of infiltration the security agencies fear the same may be misused by the infiltrators to take shelter and target local villagers. The local residents while cursing their fate blame not only Pakistan but the State Government for not paying attention to rebuilding better roads and providing alternate accommodation to shelter less villagers in times of hostilities.
Village elders in Qasba said, “after the formation of the BJP-PDP govt we had expected peace to prevail but in the last one year we have seen hostilities across the line of control escalating to higher level and civilian areas have been targeted from across the loC with heavy calibre of weapons”. “We are not feeling safe in our mud houses as the Pakistani Army has been targeting civilian areas”, a relative of injured Rubina Kousar said.