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Exodus starts in border villages of Punjab

A group of journalists who visited this village in Amritsar district, situated between the Zero Line and the ditch-cum-bund which is also referred to as the defence drain, found a majority of the houses locked.

Male members of some families have stayed back to look after the crops and cattle. The womenfolk and children have been sent to safer places.

Playing cards with two fellow villagers under the shade of a tree, the village sarpanch (headman), Comrade Sohan Singh, said the exodus began yesterday when some people from the nearby town of Khalra informed them that they had seen army tanks moving towards the Khemkaran sector.

The women and children have been sent to either stay with their relatives in villages away from the border or to Bhikiwind and Patti towns, he said.

Theh Kalan and adjoining Gillpan were overrun and ransacked by the Pakistanis in the 1971 war.

All along the Khemkaran-Amritsar road and the Khalra-Patti road, trucks, tractors, trolleys and even horse-drawn carts carrying women and children were seen moving away from the border villages.

District officials admitted that residents were fleeing out of panic caused by the conflict in Kargil and the subsequent movement of army units to the border areas in Punjab.

The exodus continues, though no official order has been passed asking the residents to vacate their homes. But on the other hand, the district administration is yet to take concrete steps to halt the exodus.

Residents of nearby Wan village and Rajoke in the Attari sector said they had decided to move out after seeing the residents of nearby villages fleeing their homes.

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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