SRINAGAR, Aug 25: The State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened the investigation into the 1998 Wandhama massacre in Ganderbal district, in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits were killed, officials said.
The move is part of a wider effort to revisit unresolved cases involving the killings of Kashmiri Pandits during the period of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.
Officials said the fresh probe will focus on identifying the terrorists involved in the massacre as well as those who allegedly assisted them, and establishing their respective roles in the killings.
On January 25, 1998, terrorists allegedly dressed in Army uniforms entered Wandhama village and gathered members of Kashmiri Pandit families at one place before opening fire. Twenty-three people, including nine women and four children, were killed.
The victims belonged to four Pandit families who had remained in the Valley despite the migration of a large section of the community after the outbreak of militancy in the early 1990s.
An FIR was registered at Ganderbal police station, but the case remained unresolved for nearly three decades. Police had attributed the massacre to terrorists linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The SIA has also reopened investigations into the 1989 killings of prominent lawyer and former J&K BJP vice-president Tika Lal Taploo and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, officials said.
Taploo was shot dead near his Srinagar residence in September 1989, while Justice Ganjoo, who had sentenced JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death, was killed by suspected terrorists at Hari Singh Street on November 4, 1989.
The agency has recently conducted searches at several locations across Jammu and Kashmir as part of its investigations into these cases.
Earlier, the SIA filed a 737-page chargesheet in the 1990 killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhatt, naming banned JKLF chief Yasin Malik as a key accused.
The agency had also recently conducted raids in connection with the 1990 double murder of Kashmiri Pandit writer and social worker Sarwanand Koul Premi and his son Virender Koul in Anantnag district.
