In a major outreach effort, Jammu & Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has launched a rehabilitation program for families affected by terrorism. At a ceremony in Baramulla, he handed over job appointment letters to 40 families who had long suffered in silence. The initiative also includes reopening closed FIRs, restoring properties, and providing financial assistance. For many, it marks the first official acknowledgment of their loss, bringing long-awaited justice and dignity. Sagar Firdous reports.
On July 13, in Baramulla, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha stood on the makeshift dais at the University of Kashmir’s North Campus. Flanked by senior officials including Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo, DGP Nalin Prabhat and Home Secretary Chandrakar Bharti, he held aloft appointment letters destined for the next of kin of terrorism victims. Among the 40 families present were those who had suffered in silence for generations, parents who had buried their children, wives who had lived with unanswered grief, and siblings raised under the heavy burden of loss. For them, the letters were more than paperwork: a long‑overdue sign that their agony was no longer invisible.
“I apologise that it took three decades for justice to reach you,” Sinha began, his words echoed through the crowd. With this apology, he cracked open a hard shell of neglect. Though framed in simple language, the sentiment carried the weight of 30 years of unacknowledged suffering and set the tone for a momentous administrative shift
This moment in Baramulla was not spontaneous. It stemmed from a visit on June 29 to Anantnag, days before the Amarnath Yatra. There, Sinha had met scores of terror‑victim families, more than 150 brought by the Save Youth Save Future Foundation who recounted familiar tales: a father killed in cold blood, a mother forced to beg for her daughter’s education, a child growing up in utter neglect. The encounter became Sinha’s turning point. “It hit me hard,” the LG said, “and I realised it was my duty to act.”
The meeting triggered high-level consultations. After returning to Srinagar, Sinha convened a meeting with top bureaucrats and police officials. Five pivotal decisions emerged that employment for eligible next of kin, to be issued within 30 days, financial support for families who had never received any, self‑employment facilitation, via Mudra Yojana loans increased from ₹10 lakh to ₹20 lakh without guarantee, reopening of FIRs and investigations, including those previously closed or unregistered and restoration of properties seized by terrorists.
In just 15 days, the administration drafted and issued 40 appointment letters well ahead of the 30-day deadline. And that helpline? More than 193 Kashmir Valley complaints and 61 from Jammu poured in through it in the following week.
Across Jammu and Kashmir, the families knew the names, Pakistan-backed terrorists linked to their loved ones’ deaths but no one ever punished the culprits. FIRs remained unregistered, complaints disappeared, and properties were seized with impunity. “Their deaths were never acknowledged,” Sinha said. “In many cases, families were silenced. No one even wiped their tears.”
Kidnappings. Brutal murders. Homes looted and destroyed. These stories etched deep cracks in the collective conscience, yet no public institutions offered healing, only indifference.
Still, even amid grief, the trauma persisted. Today, families such as those of Wali Muhammad from Fatehgarh, whose three sons were killed, and Raja Begum of Lilam (whose husband and four children died in a 1999 terror attack), stood among the beneficiaries. Their 26‑year wait ends today.
Back on stage, Sinha’s tone shifted to reassurance. He promised that no longer would families of prominent militants be “given jobs,” while the widows and orphans of their victims languished in hunger and despair. “We are identifying those elements and removing them from government services. Now the genuine victims will be rehabilitated.”
The helpline became the administrative bridge between anguish and accountability. “We are receiving hundreds of complaints from the 90s,” Sinha revealed. FIRs will be registered, properties returned, and wrongful demolitions reversed.
He described the process as “entering a new era of justice and dignity.” From June 29 onwards, the administration undertook or reopened 45 cases that had been closed “untraced,” with 23 investigations already ordered. Meanwhile, the helpline continues to bring in more grievances.
One of the most poignant voices was that of Suhail Yousuf Shah, a resident of north Kashmir’s Kupwara. His voice quivered as he recalled the 2002 terrorist attack that took his mother and uncle. “So many governments came and went, but no one even asked what happened to us,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “Today, for the first time, someone showed they cared. LG Manoj Sinha is the first person who didn’t just hear our pain but acted on it.”
Suhail’s mother had been shot and blinded by terrorists before she succumbed to her injuries. For years, he and his siblings lived under a cloud of fear, abandonment, and silence. “I kept telling my younger brother and sister that she would be okay. But deep down, we were shattered,” he said. “Now, someone has held our hands. The system has finally remembered us.”
The Baramulla event marked a radical policy shift one that finally defined justice on the terms of the victims, not the perpetrators. In his address, LG Sinha condemned what he called a “dangerous narrative” orchestrated for decades by anti-national forces to glorify terrorism, vilify security forces, and portray Pakistan-backed terrorists as martyrs, while victim families were pushed into oblivion.
“I don’t need to tell people who killed the innocent in Jammu and Kashmir, we all know it,” he said candidly. “The tragedy is, the ones who spilled innocent blood got government jobs. The victims were left to beg. That is a national shame we must undo.”
Moved by his interaction with grieving families, including a young woman in Anantnag who told him her father, a Special Police Officer had been killed while his killers lived freely, the LG said he couldn’t turn away. “That girl’s words haunted me. She said her mother had to beg for her education. That hit me hard,” he said. “That very moment, I decided: this injustice must end now.”
Within days, a dedicated grievance cell was established. A helpline was launched. And in just 14 days, appointment letters were prepared, verifications done, and compensation packages rolled out, a bureaucratic record in Jammu and Kashmir’s recent history.
Behind each of those 40 appointment letters was a story, a story of anguish, sacrifice, and forgotten promises. Fayaz Ahmad Sheikh from Sheeri, Baramulla, lost his father to a terror attack when he was just a child. “He was shot outside our house. I was seven. My little sister was five. We didn’t understand why people stopped visiting us,” he said.
His family’s compensation case was delayed for over 12 years due to alleged “verification issues.” Fayaz scoffed: “The system made a joke of our pain. Today, I feel human again.”
Fayaz, like many others, used the platform not just to thank the administration but to make a passionate appeal for reservation and recognition of victim families. “If SC and ST groups have reserved categories, why not families of terror victims? Our children also need to know that their parents didn’t die in vain,” he said.
Another story came from Irshad Ahmad, a resident of Vilgam, Kupwara, whose brother, an SPO, was abducted and murdered by terrorists in 2004. “They came at night and dragged him away. We searched all night. In the morning, his body was lying in the orchard,” Irshad recalled. “No one knocked on our door for 20 years. Today, I stood on stage with the LG and felt like someone. Like a citizen.”
Perhaps the most heart-rending account came from Raja Begum, a frail woman from Lillam village in Kupwara, whose entire family was wiped out for refusing to provide food and shelter to terrorists in 1999.
“It was around 8 PM when they came. They demanded food, I refused. They came back and killed my husband, my two sons, and my daughter-in-law,” she said. “I survived only to keep looking at their empty chairs for 26 years.”
For years, her name wasn’t even in the official records of terrorism-affected families. She lived off neighbours’ kindness and seasonal charity. Her grandchildren grew up with the stigma of being “nobody’s people.” But that changed with LG Sinha’s new policy.
“This appointment letter is not just a job,” she said, clutching the paper to her chest. “It is the state finally telling me: ‘We see you. You matter.’”
Sinha, in his speech, called her story “one of thousands” and reaffirmed that families like hers are “not victims, but survivors and our responsibility.”
LG Sinha added, “We are not doing anyone a favour. This is justice. This is responsibility. And every officer involved must treat it that way.”
Already, over 250 complaints have reached the new grievance cell. “We will act on every genuine case. Let no victim family feel invisible again,” the LG said.
LG Sinha also used the Baramulla stage to take on those promoting pro-terror narratives, often disguised as political dissent. “This is not freedom of speech. This is freedom of Pakistan’s proxy war,” he said bluntly. “We will not allow TRF or Lashkar language to be spoken under constitutional protection. Legal action will follow.”
He urged media professionals and civil society to amplify the truth that it was common Kashmiris, not outsiders, who bore the real cost of terrorism. “Their funerals were unattended. Their stories were silenced. Not anymore.”
The response was immediate. Victim families called it a “historic speech” and thanked the LG not only for his words but for acting on them. “This wasn’t optics. He changed our lives,” said Shabnam Bano, a woman from Anantnag who received an appointment letter for her brother’s sacrifice.
