On the frigid morning of January 21, 1990, Farooq Ahmed Wani left home not as a protester but as a Public Health Engineering Department engineer seeking a curfew pass to fix Srinagar’s water crisis. By afternoon he would be the lone survivor of a massacre on Gowkadal Bridge, where 53 Kashmiris were gunned down by Indian occupation forces in what survivors called premeditated mass murder.
Wani became part of procession accidentaly, organized by locals after violent Indian army raids the previous night in Chota Bazaar, where residents were beaten, arrested, and women reportedly assaulted. The crowd—men and women chanting “hum kya chahtay, azadi” and “Islam zindabad”—marched in outrage. Seeking safety, Wani positioned himself near the women.
“As soon as we stepped onto the bridge on Gowkadal, I heard one gunshot,” he recalls. “Two seconds later, hundreds of bullets were being fired.” Gunfire swept the bridge indiscriminately; people screamed as bullets struck chests, legs, and bellies. In the chaos Wani tried to jump into the Jhelum, but a taller man pushed past him and leapt first. Wani fell face-down and feigned death. The firing continued for five minutes. When it stopped, the bridge was strewn with the dead and the dying.
Through half-closed eyes, Wani watched a platoon commander—distinguished by three stars—direct troops to finish the job. “They were aiming at the heads of the people,” he says. “They were looking for any survivors and were gunning them down.” Soldiers methodically executed the injured and then gathered spent shells as if to erase evidence.
A burning kangri forced Wani to stir. “Sir, ye zinda hai,” a soldier alerted the commander. Wani pleaded, identifying himself as an engineer on duty. The officer sneered, “Pakistan maangta hai? Islam maangta hai?” and fired several shots into him. Wani collapsed, certain he was dying. When another soldier moved in for a final shot, the commander stopped him: “Don’t waste your bullets, I’ve already shot him several times.”
Wani survived, attributing his survival to divine will. His testimony stands as a stark, harrowing account of a day that Kashmiris say inaugurated a long era of impunity and institutionalised state violence.
Background and the Jagmohan Factor
The Gowkadal Massacre did not occur in a vacuum. It happened just days after Governor’s Rule was imposed in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, bringing the state under direct New Delhi’s control. At the helm was Governor Jagmohan, a controversial figure known for his hardline Hindu nationalist views.
According to Kashmiri activists, Jagmohan’s appointment signaled a strategic shift: overwhelming force would replace political engagement. “The state machinery was being primed for a military solution to a political problem,” explains a Kashmiri political observer. “His tenure would be marked by some of the worst human rights violations in Kashmir’s modern history.”
Within weeks, his administration would grant security forces sweeping powers under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, effectively legalizing the impunity on display at Gowkadal.
The Exodus and the Military Architecture
The massacre occurred against the backdrop of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley. While the official narrative frames this as forced migration due to threats, Kashmir watchers argue the exodus was systematically managed to serve a strategic purpose.
“The timing was too convenient,” Farooq Wani suggests. “With Pandit families removed, the military had a free hand. There would be no local Hindu voices to complicate the narrative, no mixed neighborhoods requiring careful distinction.”
The empty Pandit homes became barracks and interrogation centers. The social fabric that had woven communities together for centuries was abruptly torn, leaving a vacuum that military force rushed to fill.
A Reign of Impunity Begins
The Gowkadal Massacre set a precedent that would haunt Kashmir for years. What followed was a systematic pattern of massacres, extrajudicial executions, and enforced disappearances across the occupied Kashmir.
The massacre was the first mass killing in Kashmir of its kind. This day served as a catalyst to India’s systemic massacres and war crimes in the proceeding years.
The impunity was immediate. An FIR was lodged, but the investigating officer reported no evidence of human rights violations. The case was closed. “53 people were murdered on that site and no evidence was found?” Wani asks. “This is what you call genocide.”
The Survivor’s Burden
Today, Wani lives with both the physical scars and psychological weight of being the sole witness to an atrocity official records barely acknowledge. He attempted to identify the commander—“I still remember his face vividly and the three stars on his uniform”—but the military bureaucracy offered no answers.
“I tried to trace him down to see who was in charge that day, but I was not able to find any answers,” Wani says.
His survival he attributes to divine will: “It was Allah’s will to keep me alive and stand witness to the massacre.”
Yet witness to what end? The victims have received no justice. The perpetrators remain unnamed. The systematic violence that began that day has become institutionalized and normalized.
A Future of Freedom?
Wani’s faith in eventual liberation remains unshaken, even as he acknowledges it may not come in his lifetime. “We will have freedom, InshAllah. Not my generation, maybe not yours, but we will be out of this suppression one day.”
His testimony serves as an indictment of a system built on impunity. The Gowkadal Massacre was not an aberration but a template:for how protests would be met with lethal force, how survivors would be silenced, how investigations would be subverted, and how an entire population could be subjected to systematic violence while the world looked away.
As Kashmir approaches another January 21, the bridge at Gowkadal stands as both memorial and warning. The massacre may have taken 53 lives, but its true cost is measured in the countless lives shaped by the culture of impunity it inaugurated. And for Farooq Ahmed Wani, the lone survivor, the burden of memory is a life sentence from which there is no parole.
Writer is a student of BS-International Relations at National University of Modern Language and is currently serving as an intern at Kashmir Institute of International Relations.
Wani became part of procession accidentaly, organized by locals after violent Indian army raids the previous night in Chota Bazaar, where residents were beaten, arrested, and women reportedly assaulted. The crowd—men and women chanting “hum kya chahtay, azadi” and “Islam zindabad”—marched in outrage. Seeking safety, Wani positioned himself near the women.
“As soon as we stepped onto the bridge on Gowkadal, I heard one gunshot,” he recalls. “Two seconds later, hundreds of bullets were being fired.” Gunfire swept the bridge indiscriminately; people screamed as bullets struck chests, legs, and bellies. In the chaos Wani tried to jump into the Jhelum, but a taller man pushed past him and leapt first. Wani fell face-down and feigned death. The firing continued for five minutes. When it stopped, the bridge was strewn with the dead and the dying.
Through half-closed eyes, Wani watched a platoon commander—distinguished by three stars—direct troops to finish the job. “They were aiming at the heads of the people,” he says. “They were looking for any survivors and were gunning them down.” Soldiers methodically executed the injured and then gathered spent shells as if to erase evidence.
A burning kangri forced Wani to stir. “Sir, ye zinda hai,” a soldier alerted the commander. Wani pleaded, identifying himself as an engineer on duty. The officer sneered, “Pakistan maangta hai? Islam maangta hai?” and fired several shots into him. Wani collapsed, certain he was dying. When another soldier moved in for a final shot, the commander stopped him: “Don’t waste your bullets, I’ve already shot him several times.”
Wani survived, attributing his survival to divine will. His testimony stands as a stark, harrowing account of a day that Kashmiris say inaugurated a long era of impunity and institutionalised state violence.
Background and the Jagmohan Factor
The Gowkadal Massacre did not occur in a vacuum. It happened just days after Governor’s Rule was imposed in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, bringing the state under direct New Delhi’s control. At the helm was Governor Jagmohan, a controversial figure known for his hardline Hindu nationalist views.
According to Kashmiri activists, Jagmohan’s appointment signaled a strategic shift: overwhelming force would replace political engagement. “The state machinery was being primed for a military solution to a political problem,” explains a Kashmiri political observer. “His tenure would be marked by some of the worst human rights violations in Kashmir’s modern history.”
Within weeks, his administration would grant security forces sweeping powers under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, effectively legalizing the impunity on display at Gowkadal.
The Exodus and the Military Architecture
The massacre occurred against the backdrop of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley. While the official narrative frames this as forced migration due to threats, Kashmir watchers argue the exodus was systematically managed to serve a strategic purpose.
“The timing was too convenient,” Farooq Wani suggests. “With Pandit families removed, the military had a free hand. There would be no local Hindu voices to complicate the narrative, no mixed neighborhoods requiring careful distinction.”
The empty Pandit homes became barracks and interrogation centers. The social fabric that had woven communities together for centuries was abruptly torn, leaving a vacuum that military force rushed to fill.
A Reign of Impunity Begins
The Gowkadal Massacre set a precedent that would haunt Kashmir for years. What followed was a systematic pattern of massacres, extrajudicial executions, and enforced disappearances across the occupied Kashmir.
The massacre was the first mass killing in Kashmir of its kind. This day served as a catalyst to India’s systemic massacres and war crimes in the proceeding years.
The impunity was immediate. An FIR was lodged, but the investigating officer reported no evidence of human rights violations. The case was closed. “53 people were murdered on that site and no evidence was found?” Wani asks. “This is what you call genocide.”
The Survivor’s Burden
Today, Wani lives with both the physical scars and psychological weight of being the sole witness to an atrocity official records barely acknowledge. He attempted to identify the commander—“I still remember his face vividly and the three stars on his uniform”—but the military bureaucracy offered no answers.
“I tried to trace him down to see who was in charge that day, but I was not able to find any answers,” Wani says.
His survival he attributes to divine will: “It was Allah’s will to keep me alive and stand witness to the massacre.”
Yet witness to what end? The victims have received no justice. The perpetrators remain unnamed. The systematic violence that began that day has become institutionalized and normalized.
A Future of Freedom?
Wani’s faith in eventual liberation remains unshaken, even as he acknowledges it may not come in his lifetime. “We will have freedom, InshAllah. Not my generation, maybe not yours, but we will be out of this suppression one day.”
His testimony serves as an indictment of a system built on impunity. The Gowkadal Massacre was not an aberration but a template:for how protests would be met with lethal force, how survivors would be silenced, how investigations would be subverted, and how an entire population could be subjected to systematic violence while the world looked away.
As Kashmir approaches another January 21, the bridge at Gowkadal stands as both memorial and warning. The massacre may have taken 53 lives, but its true cost is measured in the countless lives shaped by the culture of impunity it inaugurated. And for Farooq Ahmed Wani, the lone survivor, the burden of memory is a life sentence from which there is no parole.
Writer is a student of BS-International Relations at National University of Modern Language and is currently serving as an intern at Kashmir Institute of International Relations.
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