SRINAGAR, Aug 12: The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Wednesday conducted searches at nine locations across Jammu and Kashmir as part of its probe into the 1990 killing of renowned Kashmiri Pandit poet and writer Sarwanand Kaul Premi and his younger son, Virender Kaul.
The searches were carried out in connection with FIR No. 45/1990 registered at Police Station Dooru in Anantnag district. The case was subsequently taken over by the SIA for further investigation, officials said.
The searches are part of the agency’s efforts to revisit and investigate long-pending cases related to the early years of militancy in Kashmir. Further details about the locations searched and the material or evidence recovered during Wednesday’s operation are awaited.
Premi, 65, and his 27-year-old son Virender were abducted and killed by militants in May 1990 in their native village in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district. The killings came during the early phase of militancy in the Valley, following which the Kaul family left Kashmir within a week.
A respected poet, writer and translator, Premi authored more than three dozen books. His literary contributions included translating the Bhagavad Gita into Urdu, the Ramayana into Kashmiri and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali.
Wednesday’s searches come more than a month after the SIA filed a chargesheet in another decades-old case involving the killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat.
On June 29, the agency filed a 737-page chargesheet before a special court in Srinagar against five alleged Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) operatives, including jailed former JKLF chief Mohammad Yasin Malik, in connection with Bhat’s abduction and killing in 1990.
Three of the accused have since died, while another accused, Khursheed Ahmad Chalkoo, is absconding and is believed to have fled to Pakistan.
