No More Mercy for Those Who Kill Mercy
I Ahmed Wani
It was a quiet summer afternoon in early 1990. My father, the Lambardar of Trahpoo in Anantnag, came home around five, his face the colour of ash. My mother asked, “Kya hua?” He could hardly speak: “Akh Bate morukh Achbal… meray saamney…”
Just a kilometres away at the Achabal bus stand, a young Kashmiri Pandit had finished his duty. He was waiting for the bus home, steel tiffin in one hand, a small packet of chocolates in the other—probably for his kids. The bus was pulling in. He stepped forward, smiling at the conductor.
That is when the man in the pheran walked up. Without a word he lifted the front fold of his gown, pulled out a Kalashnikov, and fired point-blank. The tiffin flew, the chocolates scattered across the dusty road like tiny bright wounds. Before anyone could scream, the killer was gone, swallowed by the paddy fields, the loose pheran flapping behind him like a flag of death.
That was the first gunshot we ever heard in our area. Days later a woman from Pingwana-Khudru was killed the same way. Then another. And another. A single murder became a routine. Soon whenever the Army cordoned the village a captain from Bihar or UP would shout, “Sab pheran-wale line mein!” My seventy-eight-year-old grandfather, diabetic, half-blind, leaning on his stick, was dragged out into the snow and made to stand for hours. For those soldiers every flowing pheran had become a moving armoury.
The cloth that had kept generations warm through centuries of winter suddenly became guilty by association. The pheran never fired a bullet yet it bled that day. Our identity itself had been stolen and turned into a weapon by the boys who claimed to fight for us. And somewhere on that Achabal road a handful of chocolates still lies scattered in my memory—small, bright, unbearably innocent.
Thirty-five years later history is bleeding in a new colour—white.
The betrayal hurts even more when it stains the clothes of healing. Start with Sarla Bhat, the wound that never closes. In April 1990 this 27-year-old Pandit nurse at SKIMS Soura refused to run away with the thousands fleeing the Valley. She stayed to do her job. JKLF men dragged her from her hostel room calling her a “police informer.” Five days later her broken body was thrown in a lane in Lal Bazar. Sarla who bandaged wounds by day and dreamt of looking after her old parents by night became the first proof that terror eats its own healers. Her murder was a message: even angels in white must bow to the gun.
And then there was Dr Sheikh Jalal-ud-Din, the man who was once Director of SKIMS itself. His only “guilt” was that every evening after hospital hours he opened the doors of his own house in Srinagar and treated patients for free—poor labourers, widows, orphans, anyone who knocked. No fees, no questions, just his stethoscope and his kindness. One evening in 2013 the killers came to the very place where he had saved hundreds of lives without charging a rupee. They shot him dead in his own courtyard while patients waited outside for their turn. The man who restarted failing hearts was stopped by a bullet fired for no reason except that he healed everyone equally.
When I heard that a few doctors had allegedly started hiding grenades and pistols in hospital lockers meant for medicines, something inside me cracked again. The white apron—is the one garment on earth that should never be doubted. A woman in labour sees it and believes her child will live. A cancer patient sees it and finds courage to fight one more day. A man bleeding on the roadside sees it and thinks God has come. Yet because of a handful of traitors every white coat is now looked at the way the pheran once was.
This is not security. This is heartbreak.
I salute the officer who saw those posters in Nowgam, connected the dots, and stopped what could have been another massacre. One poster, one clue, one sleepless night—and hundreds of mothers kept their sons. Let the critics who cry “overreach” answer this: do you want to wake up to body bags or to news of a plot crushed? If this is forced calm, then let it stay forced forever. I will happily give up a hundred freedoms if it means my son can catch the school bus without me counting heartbeats at every bend.
Bhagat Singh wrote from his cell: the sanctity of law lasts only as long as it is the will of the people. When the will of a few is slaughter, the law must first become a sword.
Dr Shahnawaz from Budgam, shot dead in October 2024 with six poor labourers at Gagangeer only because he was helping build a tunnel that would bring light and jobs to the Valley.
These are not statistics. These are open wounds.
We made the mistake once. We kept quiet while the pheran was turned into a symbol of terror. We watched old men, orchard owners, scholars humiliated because they wore what their fathers wore. We paid for that silence. Let us not pay again.
If today a locker in SKIMS has to be opened, a duty roster checked, a phone examined—do it. Not because every doctor is guilty, but because every patient must stay sacred. The day we stop searching out of fear of hurting someone’s feelings is the day we hand our children to the next bomb.
Sarla’s ghost still walks the corridors of Habba Khatoon Hostel. Dr Jalal’s blood still stains the courtyard where he treated the poor for free. Dr Shahnawaz’s blood still seeps from that unfinished tunnel.
Why, after thirty-five years, are we still raising boys who think paradise is reached through a gun barrel?
I blame the school that teaches a ten-year-old that shaheed is the greatest word and forgets to teach that the Prophet himself signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah to avoid bloodshed. I blame the father who claps when his son crosses the LoC for “training” and cries only when the body comes home in a box.
Close them down. Every classroom, every madrasa, every room where poison is poured into young hearts—close them down. If a few innocents suffer along the way, so be it. Innocence did not save Sarla. It did not save Dr Jalal while he treated the poor without taking a single rupee. It did not save Dr Shahnawaz.
Nehru told the fleeing Pandits in 1948: we will not let the light of freedom be extinguished by the darkness of violence. That light flickers today not because the Army is harsh but because our classrooms are soft on hate.
I dream of the day a child in Shopian looks at a doctor’s white coat and feels nothing but trust, the same trust a child feels in Chennai or Chicago. I dream of the day a raid finds only textbooks, not detonators. I dream of the day the pheran and the upran go back to being just clothes—one of warmth, one of healing.
Until then search every corner, open every locker, question every alibi. Because the dead of Pulwama, Uri, and the Red Fort were also children of this same bruised, beautiful Nation.
Let the white coat stay white.
Let no mother ever have to wonder if the hand holding the syringe also hides a grenade.
Let the only thing that explodes in a Kashmir hospital be the fierce, messy, glorious cry of a newborn.
That is the only victory worth fighting for.
