SRINAGAR: After over three decades, police have reopened the 1990 double murder case of Kashmiri Pandit poet-writer Sarwanand Kaul Premi and his younger son Virender Kaul and handed over the probe to the State Investigation Agency (SIA). The double murder case is the second case of a Kashmiri Pandit killing in 1990 being probed by the SIA this year.
The SIA on Wednesday conducted searches at nine locations in Jammu and Kashmir as part of the investigation into the killings. A police official said the searches were carried out at nine locations, including in south Kashmir and one in Jammu district. The searches were conducted in connection with FIR No. 45/1990 registered at Police Station Dooru in Anantnag district in connection with the double murder.
Premi, 65, and his 27-year-old son Virender were killed by terrorists in May 1990 in their native village Soaf Shali in Kokernag in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.
Kashmiri Pandits migrated en masse from Kashmir after the eruption of terrorism in the Valley in 1990 and settled in Jammu, Delhi and other parts of the country.
Premi was a noted poet, writer, translator and social worker who authored more than three dozen books. His literary works included translations of the Bhagavad Gita into Urdu, the Ramayana into Kashmiri and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali.
The double murder case is being investigated by the SIA as part of government efforts to revisit cases of targeted killings during the early years of terrorism in the Valley.
Earlier in June, the agency filed a 737-page chargesheet in connection with the abduction and killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat. The chargesheet named jailed JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik and four other JKLF members for their involvement in the killing.
Sarla, a staff nurse at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar, was abducted and killed by militants on April 18, 1990.
Part of govt efforts to revisit early years of terrorism
The case is being investigated by the SIA as part of government efforts to revisit cases of targeted killings during the early years of terrorism in the Valley. Earlier in June, the agency filed a chargesheet in connection with the abduction and killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat.
