36 Years Later, Raids Across Kashmir In Hunt For 1990 Double-Murder Accused

More than three and a half decades after Kashmiri Pandit poet-scholar Sarwanand Koul Premi and his son Virender Koul were dragged from their home and murdered, the State Investigation Agency (SIA) Kashmir launched a coordinated crackdown on Wednesday, conducting simultaneous searches at nine locations across the Valley in a renewed bid to track down their killers and associates still at large.

The raids were carried out across nine locations across Jammu and Kashmir - six in some areas of Rajouri district, two in Jammu, and one in Kashmir - in connection with the FIR originally registered at Police Station Dooru in Anantnag and now formally taken over by the SIA as part of its widening probe into unresolved militancy-era killings targeting the Kashmiri Pandit community. Officials familiar with the operation said the searches targeted properties and individuals believed to be linked to the conspiracy behind the 1990 abductions, though the exact locations and any recoveries made during the raids have not yet been officially disclosed.

Premi and his son, residents of Soaf Shali village in Kokernag, Anantnag, were abducted from their home in 1990, tortured and shot dead, their bodies later found hanging from a tree - a killing that sent shockwaves through the Valley and became one of the most chilling symbols of the terror campaign that drove the minority Hindu community out of Kashmir. Premi was not merely a victim of circumstance; he was among the state's most respected literary figures, a scholar-poet who had spent decades writing and campaigning for national integration, communal harmony and brotherhood between Kashmir's communities. He had also been a freedom fighter, actively involved in India's independence movement, lending his killing an added weight as an attack on a lifelong voice of unity.

For decades, the case remained a blind murder case, with critical questions surrounding the conspiracy, perpetrators and motive left unanswered.

The SIA Kashmir investigation has now made a significant breakthrough, uncovering the larger conspiracy and identifying the alleged perpetrators and their associates. It has also brought to light the sequence of events surrounding the planning and execution of the terror act - including how the abduction was carried out and how innocent Kashmiri Pandit civilians were allegedly targeted and executed as part of a broader design to unleash a deadly wave of terror.

These revelations mark a major development in a case that had remained shrouded in uncertainty for decades.

Premi's other son, Rajender, welcomed the raids, hoping for all cases to be handled this way.

"My father and my younger brother were kidnapped and assassinated. We all support the raids. When the news of my father and brother's kidnapping and assassination spread in 1990, many people said that this is a murder of 'Kashmiriyat' (cultural and social ethos tied to Kashmir). Many people said that this is a betrayal of secular trust. Many people said that this is a murder of humanity," he said.

Rajender further demanded justice for everyone.

"I appeal to the state government that all the cases should be handed over to the SIA for expeditious and effective investigation. When I hear this news, I get emotional. I want everyone to get justice. I want all the affected families to be brought to justice, and the criminals to be punished," he said.

Wednesday's raids come close on the heels of a breakthrough in a related case. In June 2026, the SIA filed a 737-page chargesheet identifying jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik as the mastermind behind the 1990 abduction, torture and murder of SKIMS nurse Sarla Bhat - a case that had remained frozen for 34 years before being reopened. Bhat, one of the last Kashmiri Pandit women still reporting for duty as the Valley spiralled into chaos, was abducted near the hospital where she worked, tortured, and shot dead at Omer Colony, Malbagh, on April 18, 1990.

Premi and Bhat's killings were part of a broader, calculated pattern rather than isolated acts of violence. From January 1990 onward, targeted assassinations of prominent Kashmiri Pandits, including lawyer Tikka Lal Taploo, sitting High Court judge Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, and Doordarshan broadcaster Lassa Kaul, followed in rapid succession, each killing designed to spread panic and force an entire community into flight.

Community organisations estimate that between 1,500 and 2,000 Kashmiri Pandits were killed in the years following 1989, though no comprehensive official record has ever been compiled, a gap long attributed to the indifference of successive state governments. Over half a million members of the community were ultimately displaced in what remains one of independent India's largest internal exoduses. Pandit groups have for years demanded a formal commission of inquiry into the killings and displacement, with several organisations describing the events as nothing short of ethnic cleansing.