MUZAFFARABAD: After more than 510 days, the gates of a bridge connecting Azad Jammu and Kashmir with India-held Kashmir were opened on Thursday for a few minutes to transfer the body of a resident who was shot dead by the Indian army after he crossed the Line of Control (LoC), official sources and his family members said.

On Tuesday, 40-year-old Kamran Nazir Chak, who was reportedly also differently-abled, went across the unmarked LoC from Pahal village where he had arrived to meet his sister from his home village of Bandi Suchiyan in the Jhelum valley district a day earlier.

An eyewitness of the incident told Dawn that he saw Chak walking across the LoC after 5pm, ignoring screaming villagers behind him, who were asking him to stop and return.

As he entered the occupied territory, instead of taking him into custody, the Indian army opened fire at him after which he fell into a ditch.

Residents of many forward locations along the LoC can see civilian and military movement on the other side with the naked eye.

According to other witnesses, the Indian army retrieved his body, the following day and handed it over to Uri police for further action who sent it for a postmortem to a local hospital.

They informed concerned officials on this side of the divide to collect the body from Kaman Bridge on Thursday.

Indian authorities handed over the deceased’s body to civilian and military officials on this side at about 3:30pm and after completion of procedural requirements, it was handed over to his family for burial, which was conducted in Bandi Sochiyan village at 7:30pm.

Pakistan and India had launched intra-Kashmir travel and trade in April 2005 and October 2008, respectively, as part of major confidence building measures (CBMs) on Kashmir which continued through two crossing points in Muzaffarabad and Poonch divisions, with ups and downs coinciding with the relations between the two countries, until April last year when in a unilateral move India announced suspension of trade, citing alleged misuse of both routes by Pakistan.

Meanwhile, another reason India gave to stop travel was repair of the “dilapidated Kaman Bridge.”

The last time, travel via Chakothi-Uri point took place after remaining suspended for two months on April 22, 2019, when only two residents of the occupied territory had returned to their side.

However, from the Tetrinote-Chakan da Bagh crossing point in Poonch Division, the last crossing took place on Aug 26, 2019, three weeks after India had scrapped the special status of India-held Kashmir, when 40 stranded passengers from AJK and 6 from the other side returned to their respective sides.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2020