Death bridges LoC divide as relatives in PoK bid farewell across river

SRINAGAR: Grief paused at a border that rarely yields. A coffin set by the narrow Kishanganga river in Keran sector of J&K became a bridge of sight, if not touch, as mourners gathered on both sides of LoC, calling out across distance for a final farewell.

In Keran — a village in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district that sits right along LoC — a funeral turned into a cross-border moment of shared mourning. Kishanganga, known as Neelum across in PoK, cuts through the settlement, separating families split by decades of conflict.

Liyaqat Ali Khan, a revenue official posted in Ganderbal, died after suffering a cardiac arrest while on duty. He had been undergoing treatment at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar for four days before his death.

By the time his body reached his village Saturday, word had travelled beyond. Relatives across LoC, many of whom had tracked his condition on social media, gathered on the opposite bank. The coffin was brought to the river’s edge, allowing them one last glimpse.

Videos now widely shared show mourners crying out from across the divide as funeral rites were performed. “It was a very emotional moment for all of us. They were watching from the PoK Dak Bungalow lawns and wailing,” a resident said.

Village head Majaz Ahmad said several of Khan’s close relatives, including siblings, had moved across during migrations of the 1990s, leaving families permanently split. Khan is survived by his wife and two children.

Such “divided families” are common along LoC, where borders run through homes, fields and kinship lines. Efforts to reconnect them have flickered over years. In 2005, then PM Manmohan Singh flagged off the Srinagar–Muzaffarabad bus service, known as Karwaan-e-Aman, offering a rare link across the divide. Cross-LoC trade followed in 2008 along routes including Uri–Muzaffarabad and Poonch–Rawalakot, operating on a barter system before being suspended in 2019 over misuse for smuggling.

On a riverbank in Keran, policy and politics faded for a moment. Only voices carried across water as a family, separated by an invisible line, said goodbye together.

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