31 years after murder of a Kashmiri Pandit, his family moves court against Bitta Karate

March 30: Thirty one years after the killing of Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir valley, the family of slain Kashmiri Pandit Satish Tickoo today moved a Srinagar court seeking to reopen the trial against dreaded terrorist Farooq Ahmed Dar also known as Bitta Karate. Satish Tickoo, believed to be one of the first Kashmiri Pandits murdered by separatist Bitta Karate.

Karate had admitted to killing more than 20 Kashmiri Pandits in an interview with a news channel in 1991. Karate was dubbed the ‘Butcher of Pandits’ after the 1990 killing. Karate, in the video, had also admitted that his first victim was Satish Tickoo.

This is the video confession of JKLF Islamist terrorist Bitta Karate who admits to killing Kashmiri Pandit Satish Tickoo in Kashmir because he was a Hindu boy. Yet Jammu TADA Court released him knowing well that he could get death sentence for his brutal rarest of rare crimes. pic.twitter.com/SZRQcorEhL

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) March 30, 2022

The criminal application was filed by an advocate, Utsav Bains, on behalf of Tickoo’s family. The court criticised Jammu & Kashmir government for its inaction in last 31 years, said Advocate Bains. He said the next hearing had been scheduled for April 16.

Karate had been arrested in Srinagar in June 1990 under the stringent Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and was in jail till 2006, after which he was released on indefinite bail. He was arrested again in 2019 by the NIA on charges of terror funding. He currently heads the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), the organisation behind the targeted killings.

The filing of the criminal application against Karate comes amid growing demand for reopening cases related to the killing of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s.. The move also comes after the release of The Kashmir Files, a film highlighting the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits and the exodus of Hindus from the valley in the 1990s. The film has sparked outrage and controversy since its release on March 11.