Six-year-old Humyra’s house in Lower Bandi was razed in a Pakistani attack during Operation Sindoor. (Express Photo by Shuaib Masoodi)
Humyra Jan, 6, can tell her classmates at school all about what happens when shells come from across the Line of Control. When her house in Bandi, Uri, was razed in a Pakistani attack during Operation Sindoor, she spent hours searching through the debris for her Winnie the Pooh toy.
It has been replaced now by a plastic toy gun, Humyra says. “Now, I want to join the police. Because if somebody’s life is in danger, they come to help.”
Humyra is a student of UKG at Government Boys’ Primary School in Lower Bandi. The name is misleading, as the school now has both boys and girls.
Humyra is the youngest child of Mohamad Anwar Sheikh, who works as a labourer. Three heavy caliber artillery shells had hit the Sheikh house on the night of May 10, 2025, hours before the ceasefire had been announced. The house, located on the Srinagar-Uri National Highway, is just a few hundred metres from the brigade headquarters of the Army, which is why it may have been hit by the shells. The Haji Peer stream that runs from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir into Uri flows nearby.
The Sheikhs escaped as they had moved into an underground concrete pen, owned by an uncle, before the shells hit.
Around a hundred houses were hit across the Valley as Pakistan responded to Operation Sindoor with shelling and drone attacks. The government classified the houses that were struck as fully or partially damaged, giving Rs 3.3 lakh for the former and Rs 1.1 lakh for the latter as compensation. The Sheikh house was classified as fully damaged.
The government classified the houses that were struck as fully or partially damaged, giving Rs 3.3 lakh for the former and Rs 1.1 lakh for the latter as compensation. (Express Photo by Shuaib Masoodi)
But the family continues to live in the battered structure – amid cracked walls, a tin roof bearing splinter marks, and rooms patched up just enough to be livable. Debris and splinter-marked school books lie among the ruins. Polythene sheets have been put up where a window once stood, with some pieces of furniture and a 22 inch TV seat the only change since that day.
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Sheikh’s daughter Naureen, 18, says: “We just don’t feel like renovating the house… It is useless. Whenever there are tensions (on the border), we are a target.”
Many around them have started selling their houses and shifting. Says Naureen: “We want to do the same, but we can’t afford it.”
The family says the Rs 3.3 lakh they got as compensation, in two installments, was not enough. “My father had taken a bank loan to build this house. Most of the compensation went to repay that,” says Sheikh’s son Farhan Ahmad, 18.
He adds that while the border has been silent for a year, they are always on edge. “Whenever we hear a siren, our hearts start to pound and we rush to stand under a staircase. Most of the time, it happens to be an alert that water is being released from the dam (into the Haji Peer stream).”
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This is the fear, Humyra says, that she tries to explain to her friends. “They often ask why I get scared by the sound of explosions. I tell them it is because they have not seen them.”
Bandi resident Ishfaq Ahmad speaks for almost all in Uri when he urges the government to make more underground bunkers. “Once the guns fall silent, everybody forgets us, till the next round of shelling. Every time, we are promised bunkers, but they never come up. We have only a few here and there.”
Humyra too has the same demand. “We have no place to hide,” says the six-year-old. “At least, we should have a bunker.”
