Reporters without orders ep 370: how poonch bled even after the ceasefire

This week, host Basant Kumar is joined by _Newslaundry_’s Anmol Pritam and _The News Minute_’s Nidhi Suresh. While the rest of the country exhaled a sigh of relief at the announcement of a

ceasefire in the India-Pakistan conflict, _Poonch_ held its breath – and bled quietly.   Nidhi and Anmol were on the ground, when the cross-border shelling began. Thirteen lives were lost.

Thirteen names that won’t make it into strategic briefings or celebration speeches. Parents _buried their twins, Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima_ – born five minutes apart, and died  five minutes

apart. In another home, a wedding that was about to be planned turned into a funeral when the father of the bride-to-be never came home. These aren’t just tragic anecdotes. This is the

aftermath of a conflict that never really ends for the people living on its edge. Nidhi and Anmol’s _reports_ on the families in both the city and the villages reveal that all of them carry

the same expression – numb, disbelief, and tired of being forgotten. Their stories don’t scream, they ache. And in that ache lies a quiet question: why is Poonch always left behind? They

came back with more than interviews. They came back with grief, with names, with stories that deserve to be told. Stories of loss, of resilience, of people who live through war long after

the last gun falls silent. Tune in.