Jammu and Kashmir: Family Living Near LoC Loses Breadwinner in Shelling After Operation Sindoor

Rajarwani (Uri): On the evening of May 8, when artillery shells landed in the picturesque hamlet on the slopes of Pir Panchal mountain range in Jammu and Kashmir, 45-year-old Nargis Begum, mother of six children, grew worried. Deafening sounds reverberated all across her home with every shell pounding nearby areas. Her youngest daughter, Sanam Bashir, was trembling with fear.

Nargis hurriedly boarded a cab along with her daughter and rushed towards Baramulla for safety. As the cab sped away, a shell fragment hit the vehicle, injuring her. She was hospitalised but later succumbed to the injuries. 

Nargis’s family told The Wire that the situation was very tense in the area after shelling on the Line of Control on May 7.

“We also heard explosions on that day but they seemed distant,” said 26-year-old Saqib Bashir Khan, Nargis’s elder son.

The Rajarwani hamlet is close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Uri area of Baramulla district. The area came under heavy shelling during the skirmishes between troops of India and Pakistan after India launched Operation Sindoor to dismantle suspected terror infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and mainland Pakistan.

Saqib claimed that the local administration neither evacuated them nor asked them to leave the area. “We also don’t have an underground bunker facility where residents living in border areas take shelter during intense shelling,” he said.

‘Couldn’t even scream for help’

Recalling the evening of May 8, Saqib said, “Two of my elder sisters had already gone to a relative’s home in Baramulla. As my mother started serving us dinner, a few shells fell in our locality. There were cries all around. Everyone came running out of their homes and started fleeing for safety. My mother and my youngest sister, along with a few of our relatives, left in the cab for Baramulla.”

According to Saqib, when the cab reached Mohura, about two kilometres from their home, a shell hit a roadside pine tree and burst, and its jagged fragments flew and landed on my mother’s face.

The room-cum-kitchen in the grandfather's house where family lives now. Photo: Umer Maqbool

“My mother couldn’t even scream for help after being hit in the face. My aunt, who also got injured by the shell, cried for assistance. The driver stopped the cab and turned on the lights of the vehicle which he had switched off to avoid attack. Everyone was shocked when they saw blood oozing out from the face and neck of my mother. She was lying in a pool of blood,” he said.

Saqib said his mother and aunt were immediately shifted to the primary health centre (PHC) in Mohura, where doctors referred them to the Government Medical College Baramulla.

“My mother was bleeding so profusely that it seemed she had been washed in blood. She succumbed to injuries on way to the GMC. The body was kept in the hospital for the night and was handed over to us next day for burial. We buried her in the ancestral graveyard,” he said.

 ‘Breadwinner snatched from us’

Nargis’s death has also had an impact on her family’s income as she was the bread earner in the family. “She used to cook meals at a local school and earn a paltry sum of Rs 1,000 per month to feed her family,” Farhat Khan, a relative, told The Wire.

Her husband, Muhammad Bashir Khan, is a labourer working on minimum wages. 

“He hardly goes out for work now due to illness. The family is in distressed financial condition and is unable to repay Rs five lakh loan which they had availed for marriage of their elder daughter as well as construction of a house,” Khan said.

The two-room unit under construction. Photo: Umer Maqbool

He said their elder son Saqib took up a job of dishwasher at a hotel in Srinagar last month to lend support to family, but lost his job after the terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22. 

“He had no option but to return home as the hotel industry came to a standstill in Kashmir after the Pahalgam attack,” he said.

The family doesn’t even own a house big enough for their relatives to come and offer condolences. At present, they are attending visitors at the house of their uncle, Muhammad Aslam Khan.

For now, a room in their grandfather’s house is all the family has now – this is their living room, this is the bedroom, and a tiny space tucked in a corner serves as kitchen.

A two-room unit is being constructed by the family but it looks more like a shelter than a house. The windows are covered by rusted tin sheets, while an unaligned door-like structure will serve as its main entrance.

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