Though Nadimarg is just 30 miles south of Kashmir's capital city of Srinagar, the drive takes nearly two hours. The village is tucked deep into the countryside where rolling, dirt roads wind through yellow mustard fields, white-flowered apple orchards and dense forest. Along the way, small girls in headscarves chant morning prayers in schoolyards. Grimy boys in woolen coats play cricket with balls made of tape.

The village stretches along the banks of a ravine. The Muslims live on the opposite side of the divide from the Hindus, who have painted pink "om" signs -- the Sanskrit symbol for peace -- on their red, two-story brick homes.

Most of the village's 50 Hindu families fled south near the onset of the insurgency in 1990 along with as many as 150,000 other Hindus in the valley. Some 8,000 of them stayed behind, living in more than 100 different villages.

Sayeed's new administration had begun preparations to bring the Hindus back to the valley, but for now that is out of the question. "How can we live among them?" said R.L. Raina, president of a camp where some 2,000 refugee families live in the plains of Hindu-majority Jammu.

During the exodus of Hindus, Nadimarg's 11 remaining families took confidence from the assurances of their Muslim neighbors and stayed behind. Local police promised them protection.

But in the attack, police said, the six constables on duty were easily overpowered. Less than a dozen gunmen, dressed in army fatigues, bulletproof vests, leather boots and helmets, cornered them and seized their rifles. Eyewitnesses said the attackers spoke both Kashmiri and Urdu, the language of Pakistan.

Mohan Lal Bhat, 19, said he crawled out of his home's second-story window and hid behind tin rafters while his father, mother, sister and uncle were dragged from the house. He saw the men gather his family and his neighbors around a lantern beneath a Chinar tree, and watched as they opened fire. "I feel useless," said Bhat, his cheeks red from sobbing. "What can I do? You tell me."

After the shooting, he said, the militants walked as far as the local school when they heard a child cry and returned. He recounted their words: "'Our work is not completed. Go back and shoot him.'"

As a messenger sprinted five miles to the nearest police post in Zainpora, Bhat said he held 2-year-old Manu, whose mother had shielded him against the fire, for over an hour. The boy was only shot in the foot, but by the time medics could reach the village, he had bled to death.

By morning, security personnel and armored trucks had swarmed the village. At the murder scene, next to the kerosene lamp that lit the execution, dried blood colored a bed of leaves where only two blue flip-flops, a muddy black shoe and a skullcap remained. Nearby, incense smoke curled above the row of corpses draped in clean white sheets, where mourners pressed spoonfuls of holy water, symbolic of the Ganges, between their purple lips in preparation for cremation.

The massacre site quickly became a political stage. Sayeed came by helicopter and stood over the bodies, shaking his head as witnesses gave testimony. Just 20 feet away, a pro-independence leader, Shabir Shah, rallied a crowd of equal size with the cheer, "Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, we are all brothers."

While India's religious tensions have peaked in recent years, Muslims in the valley say they share a common identity -- known as Kashmiriyat -- with their Hindu neighbors. They say the exodus of thousands of Hindus out of the valley was engineered by state forces, not Muslim separatists.

In the days following the massacre, Nadimarg's remaining Hindus packed their belongings in preparation and set off for Jammu, while their neighbors looked on in fear and shame. "We feel we have cheated them," said Mohammed Ismael Mir, a neighboring Muslim. "We asked them to stay and then this. They stayed here on assurance of their neighbors."

Government officials intercepted the outcasts just as they were preparing to leave, with a promise to pump up security if they remain. They agreed to wait a few more days while they reconsidered. Political stakes remain high as the country awaits their decision.

Under a gray sky on the day after the massacre, a local journalist who had covered the insurgency since its inception sat among visiting reporters on a leafy knoll beyond the corpses smoking a cigarette. "The air is ripe for more violence," he said, shaking his head. "This is not over." Then he opened his wallet and pulled out a scrap of paper from which he read a poem written by a friend. "Before Satan gets you," he read, "get the hell out of this place."

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