Jammu, April 9 -- This is not merely a story of displacement. It is a story of systematic dispossession-one that did not end in 1990, but quietly evolved and persists to this day.

When Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the Valley in the early 1990s under the threat of targeted violence, they left behind more than homes. They left behind land, identity, memory-everything that roots a community to its past and secures its future. What followed their involuntary exodus was not an incidental breakdown of order. It was a collapse of protection-and, in many cases, an open invitation to plunder.

In the immediate aftermath, abandoned homes were stripped with ruthless efficiency. Furniture, electronics, utensils, doors, windows-nothing was sp...