How a young couple’s death made India and Pakistan reopen the ‘bridge to peace’ – briefly

Around noon on March 22, the armies of India and Pakistan opened the locks of the Aman Setu in North Kashmir’s Uri – for a brief moment.

From each side of the bridge, which connects Pakistan-occupied Kashmir with Jammu and Kashmir, the soldiers of two armies, police and civil administration officials proceeded to the midway point.

This was one of the few instances in the last six years when soldiers from both sides met on the Aman Setu – the “bridge of peace” which had enabled the first-ever bus service between the two parts of Kashmir in 2005.

The bus service has been suspended since 2019 when a blast in Pulwama killed more than 40 soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force and put relations between the two neighbours into a deep freeze.

But the death by drowning of a young man and woman led to a brief pause on the hostilities between the two countries. Pakistani Army officials came to the bridge to hand over the bodies of the couple who had drowned in the Jhelum on March 5 and were pushed towards the other side of the Line of Control by strong river currents.

It was a relationship whose seriousness came to the fore only in death, leaving...

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