27 years on, SIA reopens probe into 1998 Wandhama massacre of Kashmiri Pandits

The State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened its investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre in Jammu and Kashmir's Ganderbal district, in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits were shot dead by terrorists, officials said on Tuesday, August 25.

The move is part of a broader push by the SIA to re-launch investigations into several unresolved cases involving the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley. Officials said the renewed probe into the Wandhama case aims to identify the terrorists involved, as well as those who assisted them, and establish their precise role in the massacre.

On January 25, 1998, on the eve of Republic Day, terrorists dressed in Army uniforms entered Wandhama village in central Kashmir's Ganderbal district and engaged residents in conversation before asking Kashmiri Pandit families to gather at one location. They then opened fire, killing 23 people, including nine women and four children. The victims belonged to four families who had chosen not to migrate and remained in the Valley even after militancy escalated in the early 1990s. An FIR was registered at Ganderbal police station at the time, but the case remained unsolved for nearly three decades. Police have attributed the massacre to terrorists linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Officials said the reopening of the Wandhama case is part of a wider effort to re-examine long-pending terror cases and pursue accountability for perpetrators. Alongside Wandhama, the SIA has also relaunched investigations into the 1989 killings of Tika Lal Taploo, former vice-president of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP, who was shot dead near his Srinagar residence in September 1989, and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, who was shot dead by suspected JKLF terrorists at Hari Singh Street in Srinagar on November 4, 1989, months after he had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death. Officials said the SIA has recently carried out raids at multiple locations across Jammu and Kashmir in connection with these two cases.

The agency recently concluded a separate investigation into the killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhatt, filing a 737-page chargesheet naming banned JKLF chief Yasin Malik as the key accused in her kidnapping and murder in April 1990. The SIA, which had reopened that case in 2024, submitted the chargesheet before the designated National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Srinagar — 36 years after Bhat, a nurse at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Soura, was found dead in downtown Srinagar a day after going missing.

Earlier this month, the SIA also conducted raids at multiple locations across the Union Territory in connection with the 1990 double murder of Kashmiri Pandit writer and social worker Sarwanand Koul Premi and his son, Virender Koul, residents of Soaf Shali in the Kokernag area of Anantnag district, officials said.

(With inputs from PTI)