Mohammad Sultan Naik standing outside the charred remains of his son’s house in Nowpora village of Uri. Photo: Jehangir Ali.

By Jehangir Ali

Salamabad, Baramulla (J&K): Crouched beneath the concrete steps leading into his son’s single-storey house, 82-year-old Mohammad Sultan Naik had prepared to embrace death with verses from the Quran on his lips.

On the night between May 6 and 7, when India launched ‘Operation Sindoor’, Naik watched in horror as an artillery shell tore apart the house of one of his three sons. The explosion sparked a blaze that engulfed the house of his second-eldest son next door.

Within minutes, the two structures – a lifetime of hard work by sons who are labourers – had turned into a pile of smoking debris.

Mohammad Sultan Naik walking near one of the two houses of his sons which were destroyed in cross-border shelling. Photo: Jehangir Ali.

“We have become refugees in our own land,” Naik told The Wire at the Salamabad trade facilitation centre (TFC), a sprawling complex of cargo hubs and lodges, some 102 kilometres from the capital Srinagar in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.

In better times, Salamabad TFC, a centre for trade between the two divided parts of Kashmir, was a symbol of the potential for improved relations between India and Pakistan.

Now, however, it has become a symbol of their animosity, with displaced families, such as Naik’s, becoming its new occupants.

This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.