By Amir Tantray
Jammu: The bond between twins is special. Together right from the moment their hearts beat for the first time, twins often share a unique relationship, marked by a sense of shared identity and mutual affection.
Zoya and Zain exemplified this bond. The twin sister and brother spent 12 years of their innocent, playful lives together, only to be cut short by a Pakistani shell that landed near their rented home in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on the morning of May 7, right next to the Line of Control that divides the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
They had come together in this world, but little did young Zoya and Zain know they would leave it together.
Exhausted and pale, their mother, Arusa Khan, still believes her children are out, playing like they always do, returning home in the afternoon to have their meal. Who would have the guts to tell her that her life would never be the same again? That she has not just lost her children, but her husband, Rameez Khan, is also battling for life.
Zoya and Zain are among the 16 innocent victims of the Pakistani aggression along the LoC, right after Operation Sindoor, India’s answer to the Pahalgam attack.
It had only been a few years that Rameez and Arusa – she a vocational trainer and he a government teacher – shifted from their ancestral village Kalaani Chakthru to Poonch town in search of a better life and education for their children. They must not even have an inkling that this move would prove fatal for the family.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, Adil Pathan, a relative accompanying Rameez in GMC Rajouri, said that at around 7:30 am on Wednesday, shells fired by Pakistani forces landed near Christ School in Poonch. Khans, who resided in a rented accommodation nearby, were also hit.
While Zoya and Zain were killed immediately, Rameez was critically wounded. Arusa also suffered minor injuries. He was shifted to the district hospital Poonch, from where doctors referred him to GMC Rajouri for advanced treatment.
“It is indeed an irreparable loss to the family who has lost their children, and the head of the family is battling for life,” Pathan said.
The family received dozens of phone calls on Wednesday as the message was posted on social media that Rameez needed a rare blood group B-negative. As Rameez battles for life, he is not aware that his children were killed in the attack. The twins' deaths are being widely mourned by people across Jammu and Kashmir.
Poonch bore the brunt of Pakistani shelling minutes after India, during the intervening night of May 6-7, avenged last month’s Kashmir attack, in which 26 civilians, mostly tourists, were gunned down by terrorists in Baisaran meadows, around 7 km from Pahalgam town.
A total of 16 people, including three women and five children, have lost their lives in the shelling from across the Line of Control following Operation Sindoor. Indian forces carried out precision strikes on terror camps inside mainland Pakistan and Pakistani Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK).
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