Land mafia eyeing Kashmiri Pandits owned land in Valley

SRINAGAR: Two decades after they left their hearth and home in the Valley, the land mafia is allegedly trying to grab land belonging to Kashmiri Pandits. Sources said that the land mafia enjoys the patronage of influential politicians and administration officials.

The ‘90s saw an exodus of the Pandits with militancy breaking out in the Valley. They fled their homes to settle in elsewhere in the country.

Now, up for grabs are huge tracts of land where their homes and fields and religious places once stood. Over the years, hundreds of kanals (a land measure) have now been usurped. A kanal is equivalent to a patch of land stretching across 40 feet by 120 feet.

Maharaj Krishen Raina, president of Jwala Ji Samiti Khrew, a non-profit organisation, said that the samiti owns 300 kanals of agricultural land besides non-agricultural land.

“The land was being maintained by the samiti until Pandits migrated from the Kashmir Valley en masse in the 1990s. Eventually, landgrabbers and mafia groups started eying precious land of our world-famous shrine situated beneath a hillock near the Khrew-Srinagar Road,” said Raina. “Besides, land on which a cremation ground and a children’s graveyard stood is also being encroached upon.”

Raina blamed the authorities for the encroachment. “The government has failed to enact a Bill for protection of Hindu shrines and Temples in the Valley,” he told Mumbai Mirror. Convenor of Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti, Sanjay Tikoo, alleged that a few revenue officials were hand in glove with the land mafia.

GOVT REFUTES ALLEGATION

However, government officials deny the allegation . “No temple land or any other land belonging to Kashmiri Pandits has been encroached upon,” said an official from the Revenue Department who refused to be identified.