On 25th November 1947, Mirpur fell to Pakistani invaders, a mix of Pakistani army regulars and tribal raiders. 150,000 Hindus and Sikhs were expelled and 20,000 Hindus and Sikhs were brutally killed.
More than 5,000 Hindu and Sikh women were kidnapped. Some of these women were rescued by the Red Cross and repatriated to India between 1951 and 1952.
This area of mainland Jammu and part of the Kashmir valley was illegally occupied by Pakistan in 1947 and it continues to remain in illegal occupation (Pakistan Occupied Jammu Kashmir). POJK has been wiped off its Hindu and Sikh population.
The magnitude of mass murders, rape and abduction of Hindu and Sikh women have been documented in survivor accounts.
There are horrifying accounts of mass suicides by women who jumped into the Jhelum River, many throwing their children first to avoid rape and abduction.
Tarlokchand Dangaryal’s eyewitness accounts of the harrowing killings in Kasgumma are recorded in the book Forgotten Atrocities of Mirpur by Bal K Gupta.
Tarlokchand Dangaryal who was later rescued from the infamous Gurudwara turned into a prison camp – Alibeg. Dr Kulvir Gupta, a survivor from the Alibeg Camp, says there were no Sikh male survivors in the camp and kesh of young Sikh boys were either burnt by their mothers or shorn off by rubbing the strands between two sharpened stones to hide their Sikh identity. Alibeg camp has witnessed indescribable horrors — men being taken away to be killed, women being stripped, starvation, miserable living conditions leading to disease and death.
Balraj Madhok in his memoirs describes how hundreds of women of Bhimber town upon seeing no escape consumed poison, others were kidnapped and men butchered. Bhimber saw one of the worst massacres. For so many refugees from POK there was no closure because they did not have the bodies of their loved ones to cremate.
The horrors of the atrocities on Hindus and Sikhs in present-day POJK have left a deep scar. They must be remembered so as never to be repeated.
