Punjabi goldsmith Satpal Nischal and his family had braved the turbulent 1990s in Kashmir, choosing not to migrate but live alongside their Muslim neighbours of decades. And the militants too left them and their Punjabi brethren in Srinagar alone.
Nischal now appears to have paid with his life for purportedly acquiring a domicile certificate and buying property in the Valley under the new land laws the Centre introduced in mid-2020.
Militants killed the 70-year-old on Thursday evening at his shop at Sarai Bal in the heart of Srinagar city. The Resistance Front, believed to be a front for a major militant group, claimed responsibility, alleging Nischal had acquired a domicile certificate and threatening to kill all non-Kashmiris who did so.
Till recently, the indigenous population alone could own property in Jammu and Kashmir on the strength of their Permanent Residence Certificates. But the new laws replaced the PRCs with domicile certificates, available to Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri alike, and allowed any Indian citizen to own property in Jammu and Kashmir.
Many in Kashmir view these laws as an attempt to alter Jammu and Kashmir’s Muslim-majority character.
Till the advent of the new laws, Nischal wasn’t eligible to own or buy property in Jammu and Kashmir. Local people said he ran his old shop from a rented space in Sarai Bal but was rumoured to have bought a shop elsewhere in the area after procuring the domicile certificate.
Most of the mourners at the Nischal family’s Indra Nagar home in Srinagar were Kashmiri Muslims — neighbours and acquaintances unwilling to leave the family alone in their grief.
Beneath such shows of friendliness, however, lies a palpable undercurrent of tension stemming from the abrogation of key Article 370 provisions in August 2019, which paved the way for the new land laws.
A police officer said Nischal’s nine-member family recently acquired domicile in Kashmir. Nischal, who had arrived in Kashmir nearly a half-century ago, had lived in rented accommodation at Sarai Bal for about two decades before shifting to Indra Nagar a few years ago, he said.
