New Delhi, Mar 25: The ambitious plan of Jammu and Kashmir government to initiate the process of return of pandits seems to have received a death blow with yesterday's Pulwama massacre as the displaced people today hardened their posture over the issue. Concerns over security in the event of return of the community, most of whose members moved out of the valley in 1989 after militancy erupted there, heightened after their 24 brethren still living in Kashmir were butchered in cold blood.
Although "eager and willing" to return to their motherland, the pandits, however, have started viewing with suspicion the Mufti Sayeed government's plan to resettle sections of the community at two places in the valley on an experimental basis.

"While the state government is drawing plans to make migrants return, it has miserably failed in protecting the lives and properties of those small number of pandits who opted to stay back in the valley, the Nandimarg massacre amply proves this," Kashmiri Samiti president Sunil Shakdher said here.

"The state government's claim of change in the ground situation has once again proved hollow and deceptive," added Kashmiri Pandit United Forum (KPUF) president B L Khachroo.

Bureau Report