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'Massacre was a Pak attempt to spoil Clinton's visit'

George Iype in New Delhi

A team of top central government officials led by Special Secretary T R Kakkar returned from Chati Singhpora village in Kashmir and submitted a report to Home Minister L K Advani Wednesday morning.

Thirty-five Sikhs were gunned down in the village 68 km from Srinagar late on Monday night.

Minister of State for Civil Aviation Chaman Lal Gupta, who is the member of Parliament from Jammu, also accompanied Kakkar and other key officials.

Official sources said that Gupta and Kakkar met the home minister separately and briefed him in detail about the situation in south Kashmir villages, and the need to beef up security there.

According to Kakkar's report, the main reason behind the carnage was a calculated attempt by Pakistan to cast a shadow on United States President Bill Clinton's visit to India.

It said there is "mounting tension" and "a feeling of fear" in Chati Singhpora and adjoining villages. Quite a few Sikhs have fled their homes to villages in Punjab.

Officials fear that if the security is not considerably beefed up in south Kashmir, it could lead to violence, as crowds are surging on to the streets to protest the killings.

It is the first time "an ethnic cleansing" of the second biggest minority community has taken place in Kashmir. The government fears that the incident marks a new escalatory step in the decade-old insurgency in Kashmir.

"Sikhs are the most peaceful people in Kashmir. There have been isolated incidents of Sikh killings in the past in the valley. But this is the first time that such a large number of Sikh villagers have been gunned down," an official said.

Officials said the carnage was the second biggest killing in Kashmir. In 1997, 37 people, mostly Kashmiri Pandits, were killed in Doda district. On January 26, 1996, 26 Pandits were killed in the Gandharbal village in Kashmir.

Officials point at another aspect of the massacre: it would effectively break the nexus between the Khalistanis and Kashmiri militants, which was being nurtured in recent years, they feel.

Sources said the army and intelligence agencies had intercepted wireless messages from across the Line of Control asking militants to create trouble in Kashmir during Clinton's visit. But neither the forces nor the ministry expected that a brutal attack would be carried out on Sikh farmers. There have been no such precedence in the troubled state, they point out, not even during the peak of militancy.

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