Unearthing grave crimes

Who lie burried in there?

Zubair A Dar

Kitchama/Tchahal: Villagers at Kitchama hamlet in Baramulla were preparing to bury Javed’s body in the Martyrs’ Graveyard, some 35 kilometers from his home. Over the years, burying unidentified bodies had become a routine. His maternal aunt, who lives nearby, decided not to venture out. She knew little who the deceased was. However, the seemingly calm family descended into chaos a few days later when her sister from Shalkut village in Rafiabad area of the district came searching for her son’s body in the village graveyard. 
The body was exhumed and taken home. “His head and eye brows had been shaved off. Body bore torture marks. No bullet had hit him,” says Mushtaq Ahmad Parray, 21, from Kitchama who has taken it upon himself to bury the “unidentified” for years now. His is one among the 18 villages on the banks of river Jhelum in Uri area of this North Kashmir district where earth has been concealing bodies in its chest. Along with are buried evidences of grave crimes in a raging conflict. 
A report, published by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), details 942 burials where security forces handed over bodies to local villagers - in the dead of the night or at first light - terming the dead as “unidentified militants” or “foreign terrorists” operating in Kashmir. The report - A fact-finding mission on nameless graves and mass graves in Uri area - by APDP, a body that represents relatives of the disappeared, claims that many a graves could contain civilians picked up by security forces and never heard of since their disappearance. 
At Kitchama, the villagers remember each of the burials. Parray takes us to a local shrine whose courtyard was designated as the first martyrs’ graveyard in this village. “The first time I buried a body was in 2000. Four men, all hit by bullets, were brought here and the village headman was asked to arrange for the last rites. We dug graves for them and gave them the burial bath,” recalls Parray. “That night I had nightmares. I had never laid a body to rest before, not even gone near to one.”
Soon the villagers objected to burials near the shrine and a piece of public land in the village was designated for the purpose. “Since then, close to 135 men have been buried in our village. I have myself buried several bodies – some charred beyond recognition, some mutilated by bursts of gunfire while others simply tortured to death. Generally, the age ranged between 20 and 35. They (police) would tell us that they were foreign militants,” Parray adds. 
Among those buried were two friends – Ghulam Mohammad Matoo and Javed Ahmad Shah – whose bodies JK Police handed over the villagers for burial. “They appeared to be locals. They wore white Pathan suits. We buried them but kept their photos for record. Then the villagers decided to go public about the burial through newspapers,” says Parray. “Some two weeks later, their parents came with the exhumation order and we dug the bodies out.”  
The duo had been killed along with another friend - Nazir Ahmad Gilkar - after being picked up outside the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Soura in Srinagar by a State Task Force officer. The trio was returning from a marriage ceremony on 23rd June in 1999. Gilkar’s body was fished out of Nigeen Lake in Srinagar. The accused officer – Rashid Billa – is still absconding, allegedly under official patronage. Court has described Billa a proclaimed offender. 
Similar stories are heard from every village along the banks of the Jhelum as it flows further down in this bordering area towards Pakistan Administered Kashmir. We drive ahead along this road that runs parallel to left bank of the Jhelum and connects Srinagar with Muzaffarabad. A bridge, seven kilometers ahead, connects to a right bank village - Tchahal. The fact-finding mission claims that 203 bodies have been buried here. 
We meet Manzoor Ahmad Khan, son of the village grave digger, Ata Mohammad Khan. Manzoor seconds the APDP’s claim. “More than 200 people are buried in the Shaheed Mazar (Martyrs’ Graveyard) here,” he says. “Several of them are Kashmiris. Many a times families have exhumed the bodies of their children and taken them back home. Some decided to leave them here but they often visit the Mazar and come to speak to us as well. One question that every parent asks is – did they get a proper burial?” he adds. 
At the Mazar, not more than seven graves have tomb stones, rest of them remain unidentified. One of the tomb stones reads: Basher Ahmad Dar, Son of Ghulam Mohi-u-Din Dar, resident of Jalshri Baramulla, Date of Martydom: 25 July 2004. However, the stone does not mention the emotional breakdown that Ghulam Mohi-u-Din Dar undergoes every time he visits the grave. When Bashir’s body, along with five others, was being laid to rest by Atta Mohammad routinely as an unidentified militant, the Ghulam Mohi-u-din Dar had been watching from the edge of the graveyard. 
“When my father was digging the graves, Dar had no idea that among the dead is his son,” Manzoor tells us. “Dar later came to know that his son had been killed. He returned two weeks later and my father again dug the grave to show him the body. He and his family members recognized it and decided to let it rest there on my father’s advice,” Manzoor adds. 
It had taken Mohi-u-Din two weeks to find out that his son was killed. "Bashir had left home to bring his wife back from her parents place, but never returned," says Dar's mother, Jana. The family, living in village Jalshiri, just ten kilometers from Tchehal, acquired an exhumation order from the district authorities to identify Dar's body. 
It is incidents like this that makes every parent who has lost a son anxious to know who rest in these graves. ADPD claims that eight thousand Kashmiri men have disappeared since the outbreak of militancy in this Himalayan valley, allegedly at the hands of security forces. While the association documents each case and has been protesting the rights violations, nothing substantial has come out so far. The association wants a thorough probe into such incidents and suspects that many among these 942 graves could possibly be of those 8000 men who have disappeared in security forces’ custody. 
“The details in the fact finding mission is just the tip of the iceberg. There is every likelihood that other 8000 men who have gone missing must have met a similar fate,” says Parvaiz Imroz, APDP’s Legal Advisor and President of the Coalition of Civil Society – the parent body of APDP. 
The state government has from time to time acknowledged such Human Rights violations but the figures stated have differed with each statement. On February 25, 2003, the then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, informed the state assembly that 3744 persons had disappeared between 2000 and 2003. Earlier, the then Home Minister on July 18 in 2002, he had admitted that 3184 disappearances occurred between 1989 and 2002. Ghulam Nabi Azad reduced the number to 693 in 2006. But verification of the facts is yet to come, though Peoples Democratic Party, now in power in J&K coalition with Congress, made establishment of an enquiry commission a part of the election manifesto in 2002. 
APDP now wants the facts to be dug out by some international Human Rights organizations. “Considering that Argentine Forensic Anthropology (EAAF) and International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) have the necessary skills and the expertise to carry out scientific excavations and establish the truth or otherwise the claim being made by us, we therefore request EAAF and ICMP to consider our request to take up this investigation,” reads the APDP report, while the parents keep their fingers crossed in anguish. 
---Ends---