Srinagar, Aug 24: Nearly three decades after the killing of 23 Kashmiri Pandits in central Kashmir's Ganderbal district, J&K Police's State Investigation Agency (SIA) has reopened the 1998 Wandhama massacre case, officials said.

They said the case has been reopened as part of J&K Police's efforts to gather fresh evidence to identify and prosecute those responsible.
The massacre took place during the holy month of Ramadan and on the intervening night of January 25 and 26, 1998, when a group of masked gunmen asked local Kashmiri Pandits at Wandhama village to assemble at one place. They later opened indiscriminate fire, killing 23 people, including nine women and four children.
The victims belonged to families who had not migrated after the outbreak of militancy in the early 1990s.
The Jammu and Kashmir government blamed the terrorists for the brutal killings. A case was also registered at Ganderbal police station.
On January 28, 1998, the then Prime Minister I K Gujral and his principal secretary, N N Vohra, flew down to Wandhamal in a helicopter to take stock of the situation,
The investigation did not lead to successful prosecution or conviction, and the reopening of the case is part of a broader SIA drive to revisit cases involving targeted killings of Kashmiri Pandits.
In August 2025, the SIA reopened the case of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat, who was abducted from her SKIMS hostel in April 1990 and later found dead.
The agency has since filed a chargesheet in the Bhat murder case against five alleged JKLF operatives, including its jailed chief Yasin Malik. This month the SIA also reopened the 1990 double murder of Kashmiri Pandit poet-writer Sarwanand Kaul Premi and his younger son Virender Kaul.
According to J&K officials since 1989 onwards, militants had killed over 200 Kashmiri Pandits - 109 of them in 1990 alone.
According to official records, the first Kashmiri Pandit to be murdered was a woman named Prabhavati, from Nawagari, Chadoora, in Budgam district. Prabhavati, police records said, was killed at Hari Singh High Street on March 14, 1989.