Girija Tickoo…! The real Sharda Pandit..!

The Kashmir Files is an extremely disturbing movie, yet you have to watch it with wide-open eyes to know and digest the truth. The scenes that are there will leave you in a state of shock and shivers. One such scene is where Krishna Pandit’s mother Sharda Pandit, is tortured, molested, killed, and cut in two halves with the woodcutter machine. Like the entire movie, this particular scene is also true and it had happened with the Real Sharda Pandit whose name was “Girija Tickoo”.

Ask yourself, before this movie, did you even hear the name ‘Girija Tickoo’. We know Kasab, We remember Osama Bin Laden, We know Maulana Masood Azhar by his name, but we did not even know who Tikaram Taploo or Girija Tickoo was? That’s the shame for ourselves and our generation. Girija Tickoo was a lady who have been tortured, raped, killed, and her body found in two pieces. Since then her family couldn’t even take her name. Her entire family is traumatized for their entire life.

After this film was released, it has become a movement now. Social media is flooded with reviews, reactions, videos, and content all related to The Kashmir Files. But one post on Instagram will catch your attention. This post is from Sidhi Raina, who is the niece of Girija Tickoo aka Babli. She wrote with emotions, “To this date, I’ve never heard anyone from my family speak about this incident. My father tells me every brother lived in such shame and anger that nothing had been done to receive justice for my Babli Bua.”

She wrote in her post, “My father’s sister, Girija Tickoo, was a librarian at a University who had gone to collect her paycheck, on her way back the bus she was traveling from was stopped, and what happened next still leaves me in shivers, tears, and nausea. My bua was then thrown into a taxi, with 5 men (one of them being her colleague), who tortured her, raped her, and then brutally murdered her by cutting her alive with a carpenter saw. Imagine being the brother who had to recognize his Babli, who wasn’t at fault in this gruesome battle of total hypocrisy.”

We can’t even imagine what they have gone through. We were just watching the film and we couldn't sleep for a few nights, imagine how traumatized Girija Tickoo’s family must be, for their entire life?

Girija Tickoo was a Kashmiri Pandit married woman from Bandipora and worked as a librarian at a government university in the Kashmir valley. She fled the Kashmir region along with her whole family and settled in Jammu in the aftermath of the brutal exodus of Kashmiri Pandits which then converted into Genocide, by the JKLF(Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, headed by Yasin Malik) militants, Islamic Jihadis. One day, she received a call from someone who told her that the ‘communal separatist movement’ (It is Islamic Jihadist movement in reality) in the valley had subsided and she can come back and collect her salary dues. She was assured that she would return home safely and the area was now safer.

In June 1990, Girija set out to return to the valley, collected her salary dues from the University. On her way back, unknown to her, she was closely tracked by the Jihadi terrorists who kidnapped Girija from the bus she was traveling in, they took her to an unknown place while keeping her blindfolded. Her Muslim colleague was with her. Her clothes were torn in the public, she was molested, gang-raped, and killed in front of the public, and nobody, mind you nobody uttered a single word. For them, she was the ‘Kafir’ and they were pleasing Allah by killing her brutally.

After a few days, her dead body was found roadside in an extremely horrible condition. the post-mortem reported that she was brutally gang-raped, sodomized, horribly tortured, and cut into two halves using a mechanical saw while she was still alive. An alive woman was cut in two halves, from the middle of her body. Can we ever imagine the pain she must have gone through? And for what because she was a “Hindu Woman”?

We have been seeing candle marches for Nirbhaya and Priyanka Reddy. We have been seeing people talking about brutal gang rapes and how the person who did it should be punished. We have been seeing the entire Bollywood holding the placards for Justice for Asifa, The entire Bollywood came together on mob lynching of Akhlaq. Now my question is why? Why does no one talk about Girija? And why now after releasing this movie we came to know her name and this incident? Where were we all from the past 32 god damn years?

This is horrifying, disturbing, and soul-shaking knowing that what we are watching in a movie has happened with a young lady. Her kids were so small that one of them was still dependent upon her for breast milk. The Islamic Jihadis raped and killed the women, kids, elderly people, Everyone who wasn’t Muslim. Kashmiri Hindus became refugees in their own country. And so many Girija Tickoos and Sharda Pandits were brutally tortured, raped, and killed and no one did anything.

We know that Girija’s soul must never attain the Sadgati as she was seeing from up there, Yasin Malik meeting the PM of India Manmohan Singh. She saw Yasin Malik and Bitta Karate accepting their killings and genocide with pride on national television and still, they were allowed to roam the world, freely live in India and Pakistan, Starting and growing their families and living a carefree life. She was seeing from up there that Yasin Malik holds the Indian Passport and was allowed to visit several countries, went to Pakistan, and got married. She has been seeing everything and after the truth is out in the world her soul must be at a little peace.

Our Bollywood can speak up and share videos on Black Life Matters, when cricketers can support on the ground in the public about black life matters, then why do they have a problem in speaking about “Kashmiri Hindu’s lives matters”. This is hypocrisy at its peak.

They say 'justice delayed is justice denied.' But in this case, even the supreme court at that time dined the FIRs and complaints filed against the Islamic Jihadis. Girija Tickoo and the lakhs of Kashmiri Hindus never got justice.

She has gone. But if you don’t want to see any other Sharda Pandit or Girija Tickoo getting killed brutally, step up. Watch this movie and help this truth to reach out to the entire world.

We are sorry Girija, We will never forget what had happened to you and we will never let this happen to any other woman. That’s our promise to you.