A terror call went out as bullets shot and the report of automatic rifles echoed in the surrounding mountains of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district
The message from was short. “Keep a grave ready.”
Security forces have killed two militants, but their partner was holed up in a house and fighting desperately.
In the thick of the counter-insurgency operation, ground intelligence suggested the third gunman could be a foreigner.
The man was shot dead hours later and his grave was ready by the Jhelum river in Baramulla district’s Gantmulla village.
But the pit remained empty for two weeks, covered with a tin sheet. The body never reached the pre-assigned grave. The man turned out to be a Kashmiri and was buried in his native village.
The gravedigger’s labour in windy, rain-swept Gantmulla didn’t go waste, though.
The corpse of an unidentified foreign militant, killed in a cave hideout in Pulwama’s Tral forests, arrived a fortnight later.
The waiting burial pit became one of the 43 graves of “foreign militants” on a rocky patch in Gantmulla, a mountain village buffeted by breathtaking greenery and the Jhelum.
It is close to the Line of Control, the de-facto border between Indian and Pakistan, and 65km north of Srinagar.
Little is known about dead foreign militants. Police provide patchy strands of information such as the militant’s code name, his organisation and the time he has been active in the Kashmir Valley. His life and family remain a mystery.
Police said villagers help during the last rites. Abdul Majeed Mir, a 50-year-old tea-seller, was the first gravedigger to lend a hand.
“We are all humans and it is a universal obligation for us to respect the dead. Also, the Prophet taught us to perform the last rites of people with respect. Rest, I don’t care whether they are militants or otherwise,” Mir said.
The graveyard overlooking the Baramulla highway is open to the public. “Many strangers offer special prayers from the road itself,” a constable said.
The imam of the village mosque, Mufti Aijaz, leads the funerals but the revolting sight of mutilated bodies almost forced him to quit.
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