Srinagar: The death of a Jammu and Kashmir government official in the remote Keran region of Kupwara district has turned the spotlight on the human cost of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan which continues to divide the Kashmiri families living along the Line of Control (LoC).A photo circulating on social media recently showed dozens of anguished young and old men, children swarming the coffin of Raja Liaqat Ali Khan which was placed in an act of shared mourning along the banks of Kishenganga river in Keran.The coffin was brought to the eastern bank of the Neelum River in Keran village, on the Indian-administered side of Jammu and Kashmir, only to be shown from a distance to part of the family living on the western bank, in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/LsE7stM14h— Jalaluddin Mughal (@Jalalmughal) April 26, 2026According to locals, Khan’s close family including his parents, siblings and others had migrated to the other side of the LoC when an armed insurgency broke out in Jammu and Kashmir in the early nineties.Reports said that Khan decided to stay back in Jammu and Kashmir, serve in the government and raise his own family. He was posted as naib-tehsildar in Ganderbal district and passed away at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Science in Srinagar on April 26 after a heart attack. He is survived by his wife and four children.Soon after his body reached his home in Keran, reports said that the news of his demise also travelled across the LoC to his family who gathered on the banks of Kishenganga along with other relatives and neighbours to get his last glimpse.The river splits into two the scenic Keran valley in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.Khan used to meet his family members through a permit regime chalked out with Islamabad by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government for the Kashmiri families who are divided by the LoC.However, these meetings were stopped by the Union government in 2019 in the aftermath of the Balakot strike, according to Ravinder Pandita, president of the All-India Kashmiri Samaj. After his funeral bath, Khan’s coffin was brought to the banks of Kishanganga river in Keran, also known as Neelum river in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK). Some metres away on the other bank of the river, dozens of Khan’s relatives and others had gathered in a dak bungalow to join the mourning and funeral prayers. These are scenes at LoC keran of funeral of Liaqat khanon our side. His sister & family crossed over to PoK in 1989-90 militancy turmoil, when about 1 lac people crossed over. The divided families on LoC was humantarily helped by Vajpayee govt to meet each other on LoC… pic.twitter.com/sKY9fMM7AY— Ravinder Pandita(Save Sharda) (@panditaAPMCC63) April 28, 2026Emotional scenes were witnessed as Khan’s family members who were unable to come together and shoulder his coffin cried helplessly across the LoC while bidding him farewell.In a post on X, Jalaluddin Mughal, a journalist based in Muzaffarabad city of PoJK, said that Khan’s relatives could neither see his face nor participate in the funeral prayers. “In divided Jammu and Kashmir, not only families remain separated, grief and final rituals are divided as well,” he said.A video filmed after the funeral prayers from the PoJK side showed hundreds of Kashmiri men in Keran walking in a procession along with the coffin as the roar of the river failed to drown the grief-filled screams of Khan’s relatives. According to reports, dozens of Kashmiri families continue to remain divided along the precarious de-facto border between India and Pakistan which takes a huge psychological toll, in times of joy as well as grief. In a statement on Wednesday, Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that the incident reflected the “continuing human tragedy” faced by the divided families living across the LoC.“At the LoC, on the banks of the Neelum River in Keran, a sister stood on the Pakistani side while her brother’s body lay across. Just yards apart, she could see the coffin but not his face. In Kashmir, even grief is divided, capturing the profound human cost of this separation,” he said.Sharing his experience, Mirwaiz said that being part of a similar divided family, having some relatives across the LoC, he could “deeply relate to the pain of separation felt most intensely in times of grief and loss”.“Such recurring tragedies are a stark reminder of the urgent need to address the human dimension of the conflict and to facilitate greater connectivity and compassion for divided families. A meaningful engagement, guided by the spirit of insaniyat (humanity) and jamhooriyat (democracy), as articulated by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, remains essential in moving forward towards a humane and lasting resolution,” he said.