Fear of a renewed Operation Sindoor continues to hang over the border district of Poonch a year on, but the dread has lost its grip on teacher couple Rameez Khan and Urusa Khan, who have already lost everything they held precious.
Last year’s shelling took away their twins, Zain and Zoya, 12, transforming their existence into a constant, dull ache. What comes next matters little to them.
Poonch district, particularly its premier Christ School where the kids studied, bore the brunt of Operation Sindoor launched on May 7
last year in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 people.
While the terror attack drew widespread national attention, loss of civilian lives in Poonch did not find much prominence in the broader discourse.
The Khan family had shifted from Kulani village in Poonch to the town, around 10km away, to give Zain and Zoya a better education and spare them the hardship of daily commute, little knowing the decision would ultimately lead to the tragedy.
“Only five to six months before the tragedy, we had shifted to the city,” Rameez told The Telegraph.
On May 7, when Poonch was battered by Pakistani shelling, the family left their rented accommodation to return to their village, which was safer. But a shell explosion killed Zain and Zoya and injured their parents, who had to be hospitalised.
Rameez sustained grievous injuries, and his wife chose not to tell him about the death of the twins immediately. They were buried in his absence, and he got to know about it only a fortnight later.
“We lost our kids. They were all we had. When they were around, life was beautiful. People say it (Sindoor) can happen again. We tell them it makes no difference to us. (We will also die) and go where our children are,” Rameez said. “Every day passes in a quiet attempt to kill time.”
Locals said the couple spend much of their time looking at family photographs, and have not once returned to the town.
It was also a deeply painful year for the school, which lost three students — including the twins — to shelling. Vihaan Bhargav, 13, lost his life as his family attempted to escape the violence.
On the anniversary, the school chooses to hold its grief quietly, mindful that any commemoration could reopen the wounds for the families and fellow students.
“It has been a tough time for everybody here. The parents are in no mood to hit the rewind button. We discussed with the parents, and they felt it (public commemoration) was not necessary. We held a prayer meeting today,” principal Father Shijo Kanjirathingal said.
“The parents of the twins are much stronger in accepting things as they are, but Vihaan’s parents are still in denial,” he added.
Pakistani shelling had killed 13 civilians, including eight Muslims and four Sikhs, in the district. The residents claim there was a concerted attempt from the central government, national media and Right-wing ecosystem to give a communal hue to their tragedy by suggesting only non-Muslims were targeted. In one incident, several Delhi-based TV channels had flashed the news that one of the victims, Qari Iqbal Mohammad, a madrasa teacher, was a terror mastermind from PoK.
