Columnist Sunanda Vashisht described in heartbreaking detail the horrors faced by Kashmiri Hindus in 1990 while testifying at a US Congressional hearing on human rights on Thursday.
"I am choked by the thoughts of those voices that I represent here because their voices were extinguished in the most brutal fashion," Vashisht said.
She spoke of a young woman, a lab assistant in a school, who she said was "abducted, blindfolded, gang-raped and cut into two halves on a mechanical saw while still alive". She spoke of a young man, an engineer, who was shot by terrorists through the rice container he was hiding in.
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And she spoke of the man's wife, who was forced to eat the blood-soaked rice."I could go on and on," said Sunanda Vashisht. She described what happened to Kashmiri Hindus as "worst ethnic cleansing witnessed in independent India".
Vashist also said the scrapping of Article 370 was "a restoration of human rights". "Today I am delighted that Kashmiris have the same rights as the Indian citizens," she said.