A year after Operation Sindoor, two schools stand testimony to the cost of conflict

Subscribed with another email? Logout and Login with that one. Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Science For All The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers THEdge At the cutting edge of education and careers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there Gender Agenda Stories from beyond the binary. The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Updated - May 07, 2026 07:06 pm IST - Srinagar A man stands inside a house damaged after cross-border shelling by Pakistan during Operation Sindoor at Behra village in Poonch district, Jammu and Kashmir. | Photo Credit: PTI A year on, two schools in Jammu & Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan in May last year, stand testimony to the cost of war, tragedy, and trauma, staring at a long road to recovery. Also Read | Operation Sindoor 2026 news updates With Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) on the other side of the nearby hills, the Christ High School in Poonch is finding it hard bury the memories of the war. “Who would want a war that leaves children dead? In pursuit of justice for the Pahalgam victims, there was addition to the list of civilian deaths. War exposes the vulnerabilities of human beings,” Father Shijo, principal of the school for the past seven years, told The Hindu. Three students – Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima, twins who were in Class 5, and Vihaan Bhargav of Class 8 – were killed in Pakistani shelling when they were trying to move to safer locations between May 7 and 11. They were among 21 civilians, including five children, who died on this side of the border during Operation Sindoor, launched against Pakistan following a dastardly terror attack that left 26 civilians, including 25 tourists, dead in Pahalgam. “Parents of two Class 5 students were evacuating them out of their native village when a shell hit them. The third student was on the way to Jammu in a vehicle when splinters from a shell exploded and hit him,” said Mr. Shijo, as he recalled how the Poonch town was hit by shelling for at least two days. “I have never witnessed or experienced anything like that in my life,” he added. On the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor on Thursday, the staff members of the school, with 1,500 students, held silent prayers for the dead and visited the two families for a remembrance meeting, but avoided any ceremonial function on the campus. “We did not engage students in any remembrance because it would have recreated the scenes. It took students more than four months to come out of the trauma. We had to arrange local NGOs for counselling and chit chats with students to comfort them. We also invited the parents last year, many of whom broke down while sharing their ordeal, to make them unburdend emotionally,” said Mr. Shijo. The school had to club classes and shut the rooms where the students, who lost their lives, studied. “Students were not willing to study in the same classroom, especially bench-mates of the deceased. At every sound of a cracker, students would get frightened. They lived in fear for many months,” said Mr. Shijo. The school saw a major power shutdown during the war and relied on its borewell for water. Besides, the shelling shattered the windowpanes and damaged the roof. “We have rebuilt. In fact, we have an underground space in place, but can accommodate only 200 people,” he added. Around 141 km away from the Poonch school, another school in Pulwama district tells a story of loss. The school was damaged in a blast, but since the nature of the explosion is still unknown, it does not fall in the compensation list of those who suffered damage in the conflict and were provided relief money. A two-storey building of the high school, Madrasa Taleem ul Quran, in Pulwama’s Wuyan was hit by an unidentified aerial object before sunrise on May 7. Locals said the administration neither provided any compensation for the loss nor revealed the cause of the explosion that ripped through the school building. One year of Operation Sindoor | PM Modi says Indian forces gave fitting response to terrorism “I heard in the morning of May 7, the school was hit. I rushed to check the damage but was stopped by the security forces. Later, I saw the computer lab was completely damaged. It has taken the brunt of the explosion. We acquired a children safety certificate from the education department only after dismantling the building first. It was not safe. However, no compensation was provided,” Shabir Ahmad

A year after Operation Sindoor, two schools stand testimony to the cost of conflict

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A year after Operation Sindoor, two schools stand testimony to the cost of conflict

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