It's been 25 years since a group of Kashmiri Pandits had to leave their homes, never to return.

Around 60,000 Kashmiri Pandit families escaped the separatist insurgency as the violence peaked in 1989 and 1990.

Living as "refugees in their own country" for past quarter of a century, displaced Kashmiri Pandits still can't return to the Valley because of they feel unsafe. "Our core concern is safety and security for the community in Kashmir Valley," a prominent KP leader and National spokesperson of Prem Nath Bhat Memorial Trust, Dr R L Bhat told PTI.

Dr Bhat, who along with his family, left his home in the Noorabad belt in Kulgam district in 1990, feels that if they were to return to Kashmir, concerns about security are as relevant these days as it was during the days of migration.

"It is a quarter of a century since our exodus and we are nowhere near to any solution. Central and state government have failed to ensure any type of confidence building measure for community in terms of return of KPs to the Valley," Dr Bhat said.

Dr Bhatt was among many, who on Monday, to commemorate 25 years of Kashmiri Pandits' exile, shared their stories.

Here are some of the most heart wrenching first person accounts:

Aditya Raj Kaul, a reporter with Times Now, wrote about the day his family was forced to leave Kashmir.

"I was nine-months-old, wrapped in a white cloth, unaware of the genocide. 'Exodus' till that day was a historical term used by Pandits to debate history. Years later, homelessness would shatter my heart to pieces. And the thought of a lost childhood," he wrote on Facebook.

Vimal Sumbly told NDTV that he has trouble answering his young son's questions. "He says despite being a Kashmiri, he has never seen snow. What do I tell him?" said Sumbly. "The sad thing is you have to explain even to your own countrymen what happened. People still don't understand."

In a heart wrenching story, Smriti Kak Ramachandran recalled her journey from Jammu, 25 years back. She writes in The Hindu:

"In my story, a gun-wielding monster was not at my doorstep; it was the fear of him appearing that scared me more. I did not watch my house burn; I saw what was left of it in the pages of a magazine. My story is not about the loss of material goods; it is about the pain of carrying memories."

Ramachandran writes how those who were forced to leave narrated stories of death, war and a burning Kashmir. "....Bullet-ridden bodies, of hate messages painted on walls, of bodies with eyes gouged out, and of women raped and butchered in the streets," she writes describing the state of Kashmir.

They spent the next few years in Jammu waiting for 'normalcy', so that they can return home. But, it turned out to be 25 years of exile.

"We kept waiting and my ever-smiling grandfather began to lose hope; eventually he died of a broken heart. He had worried every day about the house we left behind, and the home he built. He had worried about the gaps in its tin roof and about the weeds that would have destroyed his meticulously laid out garden. Most of all, he worried about us growing up, outside our home. But it was not the material loss that broke his heart," she writes.

Ashutosh Sapru, Hindustan Times' national editor of design narrated his story of losing his home and his books in this piece. He says the loss of 6,000 books, which was 'mercilessly ransacked' was what hurt his father the most.

"With no hope of going back, we sold our house a decade later. We got to hear that our ancestral home in Habba Kadal, ours for five generations, had been razed to the ground," he writes.

However, not all of them decided to leave their homes.

Vijay Sas tells Hindustan Times that he was 14 when his father decided not to migrate from the Valley and 'face the bullets instead' even as thousands of Hindus were fleeing their ancestral homes in the face of rising militancy.

Sas told HT that his family banked on the goodwill of the Muslim neighbourhood instead of the nearby security outpost. "Unlike other Kashmiri Pandits, those who stayed back faced guns from both sides. For Muslims we were IB agents and for migrant Pandits we were ISI agents," he said.

A lot of people took to Twitter, some of them described the struggle that they went through, and many supported the Kashmiri Pandits, seeking an answer from the government.

Here are some of the tweets:

Remembering with sorrow this day 25 years ago. #25YearsofKPExile — Swapan Dasgupta (@swapan55) January 19, 2015

I was there. I saw it all.Some of us survived, others were not that lucky. There is perhaps nothing more to say or write #25YearsofKPExile — Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) January 18, 2015

#25YearsofKPExile How can I forget the house where I, my dad and my granny were born. It lies in shambles. pic.twitter.com/tknuLhR7rz — Manish Nadir (@manish_nadir) January 18, 2015

From Arvind Gigoo's book The Ugly Kashmiri (Cameos in Exile) #25YearsofKPExile pic.twitter.com/toLg0ycw8f — Smriti Kak (@smritikak) January 18, 2015

5 lakh forced into #25YearsofKPExile in their own country. 800 killed, raped. 500 temples demolished. No probe, no justice, no movie either! — गीतिका (@ggiittiikkaa) January 18, 2015