LEHOTA (DODA): At the top of a mountainous path, strewn with luscious plums and apricots fallen off the trees amid lush green terraced patches of maize, are the remnants of a row of flat-roofed rock houses in Lehota village, around 50 km from

town. Exactly 20 years ago, when the rest of the country was glued to the news of India-Pakistan war at Kargil, it was in these houses that a clan of five brothers fought a lonely battle with over a dozen

terrorists for 13 hours. When dawn broke, 20 family members with bullet wounds were found on the blood-soaked mud floor. Fifteen of them were dead.

Four of the dead adult males were armed members of village defence committees (VDCs), which had been set up when militant attacks in the inaccessible villages of the Jammu region became frequent during the 90s. The Army was deployed since the onset of militancy but had been moved from the region to Kargil for the war.

“Every time I close my eyes, all I can hear is my wounded father during that gunfight asking my sister, ‘Ab kaun bacha hai? (Who is still alive)’,” says Joginder Singh, 24, one of the survivors who lost his parents, two brothers, grandmother, three uncles, two aunts and five cousins in the massacre.

Joginder, who grew up in a Jammu orphanage, is now pursuing masters in commerce in Pune. He will be the first post-graduate of his clan.

Since the carnage, neither he nor any of the 24 survivors of the clan have revisited the wreckage of their homes on the 3500-feet-high

mountain

in the village. After two decades, Lehota, 200 km east of Jammu, remains accessible only through an arduous 10-hour-long journey by road and foot, including a two-hour climb to the steep mountain.

Joginder Singh (24), one of the survivors who lost both his parents, two siblings and grew up in an orphanage is on his way to be the first post-graduate in his entire family.

Victims of ethno-religious cleansing, the surviving members of the family were given a tiny piece of land by the state government to rebuild their lives just 10 to 15 km downslope in a slum of Thathri town. The area, like the rest of Doda district, has a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims. Both the communities speak Kashmiri, Baderwahi and Hindustani.

“Only we know how we have survived after that bloodbath. Even after 20 years, I feel a fire in my gut. We are a ravaged lot. We used to have a simple but self-sufficient life by farming our own land. But now we are refugees with nothing; our children have no future,” laments Joginder’s aunt Shakuntla Devi (57), wife of the only brother who had survived. Devastated by the tragedy and the vicissitudes of displacement and poverty, her husband died some years after the massacre.

“The screams and cries of Papa, Mummy and my small brothers keep ringing in my ears. All I see is blood spilling everywhere when I think of my family,” says Joginder’s sister Santosha as her tears well up.

Along with aunt Shakuntla and other elders of the family, Santosha had rescued the smaller children, including Joginder, by feigning dead when the bullets were coming from all directions during the attack. After fleeing their homes in pitch darkness of the night, Shakuntla had informed CRPF about the massacre and brought jawans to the spot on the morning of July 20, 1999.

“The government didn’t do much for us despite so much sacrifice by our family and despite all the promises made to us. They gave us five jobs and Rs.1 lakh each. Is that the value of our lives?” says Shakuntla, surrounded by the new members of the family, her daughters-in-law, in a small room with little furnishing.

Joginder, who was adopted for his college education by Sarhad, a Pune based NGO run by Sanjay Nahar, teaches young students and plays music with a band ‘Gaash’ (light) for peace and reconciliation, while his brother works as a dish-washer at a hotel in Bangalore.

“Only I chose to study because I believe that education can change things. I want to work for the welfare and prosperity of my people back in my own district one day,” he says with a bright smile. At the ruins of his house in the village where his family members were cremated, the sun pierced through a blanket of clouds.