Homecoming Of Strangers

Two Pandit families return to the Valley to find their homes taken over by security forces and their land grabbed by locals. The government has offered little help.

Bhatt still remembers the night when he left the Valley with his wife, son and daughter-inlaw, leaving behind two houses and 35 kanals of apple orchards and paddy fields. “We were scared and we took the decision in haste. Everything was intact then, but today I am an alien in my own land,” he says. Bhatt also owned a house in the nearby Arin village. In his absence, the building was demolished by a man who later got the land transferred to himself. Bhatt says officials of the revenue department assisted in transferring his land illegally. Read More.