kashmir scribe

MURDER MOST FOUL

2009-06-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

JK Government’s one-man enquiry commission to probe the alleged rape and murder of a women and a teenage girl in Shopian, has its task cut out. It has three basic questions to answer – what was the cause of death, weather the two women were raped before death and who the culprit was. Zubair A. Dar pieces together the events of the tragedy from circumstantial evidence and the glitches that make the enquiry more complicated than it appears.

Nearly a week of unrest after the mysterious death of a pregnant woman and her teenage sister-in-law in south Kashmir’s Shopian town, details about the incident are still sketchy; compounded by government’s near siege of Shopian.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah diluted the government stance on the issue. “Something has happened in Shopian,” he told newsmen. “We will find out,” he added.

While his statement marked a subtle change in the government’s handling of the post incident situation, the task to find out the truth about the fate of the two women has been assigned to a one man commission, Justice (Retired) Muzaffar Jan. On June 08, he will begin recording testimonies of people who might have been witness to the last moments of the woman and the teenager. Except for one person, however, fewer have claimed to know anything about their journey back home.

Neelofar, 22, and Asiya, 17, were sisters-in-law. Neelofar, whose parents live in Tukru village on Srinagar Shopian road, was the mother of a 2-year-old son and family claims that she had conceived again. A housewife, Neelofar was married to Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar in 2006. Asiya, Shakeel’s sister, was a class XI student who had passed her matriculation with a distinction.

The two had left for their orchard around 4 pm on Friday, May 29. Their bodies were found 13 hours later, lying on the bank of a stream that flows along the edge of the Shopian town.

Was it a death by drowning as government claimed initially? Or the two women had been killed. The mystery has to be solved by Justice Jan. The crucial help will come from the Forensic Science Laboratory report that is examining the samples taken during two autopsies conducted on the bodies. But the real challenge comes from the general perception among people in the area created by the events before the bodies were found.

As Neelofar and Asiya did not return by sundown, their family had begun to grow apprehensive about their fate. Their fear was not unfounded. Heavy presence of security forces in the area makes every family nervous if a member does not report back before dusk. And when it comes to women, the concern grows deeper as incidents of molestation and rape by security forces are no rarity in Kashmir. Neelofar’s husband, Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, had by then closed his furniture shop in the main market and reached home.

Shakeel says he had seen his wife last when he had come home for lunch around 3:30 pm that Friday. “When I left, my wife was preparing to leave for the orchard. Asiya was yet to return from her school. I left before Asiya came,” he says.

“As I reached home after closing my shop at around 7:45 pm, I looked for Asiya. My (second) sister Roomi told me that she had gone with my wife to the orchard,” he says. “It was already beginning to grow dark. I thought they must be on their way home by now and so sent my brother’s son Aqib to receive them midway and accompany them safely home.”

Aqib returned around 15 minutes later and said he could not find them. He had not gone beyond the old bus stand. Worried, Shakeel says, he borrowed his neighbour’s motorcycle to reach the orchard around two kilometres from their house. “It had little fuel in it. I went to fill the tank first,” he says. He had to go to three refilling stations to find fuel. “It took around 30 minutes to refill the tank. I then headed for the orchard but I did not find them there.”

A family that lives near the orchard was the only source Shakeel could find some information from. So he approached them. “The house owner (Ghulam Qadir) told me that they had seen my wife and sister leaving the orchard and walking towards the bridge to cross the stream towards Shopian town. He said they had left around the time evening prayers are offered,” he says.

Hoping to find them on that route, Shakeel set off in the same direction. He says he looked everywhere along the route, but could not find them. “I came back and again asked Ghulam Qadir. He advised me to search again on the same route. I was hoping that they had entered some nearby home fearing to walk home in dark. But no one could give me any clue about their whereabouts,” Shakeel says.

Anxious, Shakeel returned home to seek help in tracing the two. “I called a friend and told him about the situation. He came to my house and we left together to continue our search. This time, we took a lantern along for light,” he says. “We searched every corner of the orchard and asked people along the way if they had seen my wife and sister. No one had any clue.”

In the meantime, Shakeel’s elder brother Zahoor reached the orchard with another lantern in hand. Failing to trace the two, they decided to contact police. “At the Police Station Riyaz, (the munshi), registered my complaint and immediately sent some men in a Tata 407 vehicle to look for my wife and sister,” he says. Police says it was around 11:45 pm when the complaint was registered. The search party kept looking for the two around the area where the women had been seen last. The search continued till 2:30 am but no trace was found.

Police abandoned the search and decided to wait for first light to resume. Shakeel says that he and his brother Zahoor went to the Police Station in the morning, hoping that some police men would accompany him. “They were taking time to prepare. So we left to keep searching till they come,” he says. “Eventually, the SHO arrived. He spotted the body of my wife (Neelofar) from a distance at the same spot where we had looked twice during the night.”

Shakeel and others who along with police recovered the body from the spot claim that it was lying on the bank of the stream. “Only the legs were in water. The shirt had been pulled up to make the body bare. I think she had been murdered and the body placed there,” he said.

But police contradicts the claim. “I saw some clothes floating on the surface of water. It appeared to me that they must be of some women,” says SHO Shopian, Shafiq Ahmad. “I asked my men to check. The body was found,” he says.

Downstream, Zahoor and other residents located Asiya’s body around an hour after Neelofar’s body was spotted. Zahoor says it was lying on the bank.

“It was placed away from water,” he says. While Neelofar’s body was taken to the hospital for autopsy, Asiya’s body was first brought to the family’s home at Bongam neighbourhood of Shopian town but was soon shifted to hospital for autopsy. Here the situation took a twist.

The news of the recovery of the bodies of two women had already spread in the town like wildfire. While doctors were preparing for an autopsy, people from different neighbourhoods of the town started pouring in. Soon, the mob was beginning to grow restless.

Inside the hospital, the job of conducting an autopsy was assigned to Dr Hilal Dalal who soon sought Dr Nazia’s assistance. The female doctor’s job was to ascertain whether the women were raped or not. A paramedic, who was called in to assist in autopsy said that ascertaining whether the women had been raped or not was possible only through a PV examination.

“But the bodies were too stiff that legs could not be moved apart,” the paramedic said. “So the only way to find out was a PV examination that could not be conducted unless joints were stressed to move the legs. That could have broken the joints. Dr Nazia expressed incompetence in doing that, fearing loss of crucial evidence.”

The paramedic’s statement is corroborated by the women who gave the bodies their funeral bath. One among the women, Zamrooda, lives in the neighbourhood. She says that Neelofar had reddish marks on the right side of her back and the outer side of her right arm. “There were no other injuries. The jewellery was intact but the fists were clenched. We had to cut the rings on fingers and the gold bangles on arms to remove them,” she said.

Another woman who gave Asiya’s body its funeral bath lives in a neighbouring locality. She says Asiya’s body was as fair as would have been if she was alive. “So any marks or injuries would have been very visible,” she says. “There was a cut on her head. Blood was oozing out of her nose probably because of the head injury. There were reddish marks on her forehead but no injury mark was visible on her body. Her left leg had a small wound above the ankle.”

If the death was not due to violence or rape, did the two women drown? Chances, the locals say, are least. “The stream has little water to drown an adult,” say the locals. Doctors who carried out the autopsy at the Shopian hospital say the bodies did not appear to have remained in water for long. “The bodies were not swollen the way a drowned person’s body is,” said a doctor. “The skin grows pulpy if the body remains in water for long. That too had not happened.”

Add the women who performed the last rites, “When we wash utensils at home, the hands soften due to constant contact with water. The bodies had grown no such softness.”

If the women drowned, the death must have taken place within a short period after they left the orchard. Doctors say 12 hours of contact with water are enough to grow any such signs. And then, how can both drown when the water level in the stream in not high? The stream, in fact, is one among a dozen small streams that collectively form the nullah Ramb-i-Aar. It roars only during rains and floods and for most of the year the water discharge is low.

If the women did not die of drowning, murder seems the likely possibility. The task of the team of doctors was to ascertain the actual cause of death and to examine whether the duo had been raped before being finally killed. Another possibility was death during rape. At the hospital, as the first team of doctors was struggling to carry on a PV examination, restless mob allegedly started pelting stones on the mortuary where autopsy was going on. Dr Bilqees, who had just arrived to assist, was not able to carry on any further. The breaking of window panes, doctors say, forced them to flee. By then, however, the doctors had taken samples of viscera – one kidney, one lung and a part of the spleen.

As restless mob entered the mortuary, doctors were compelled to leave. Doctors say that they had reached no conclusion about possibility of rape as procedures were too complicated and could have been carried out only by expert gynaecologists. After some strife between administration and the family which was backed by local people, a decision to carry out a second autopsy was made. A team of doctors was called in from Pulwama district hospital to do the expert job.

By that time, the family had grown very apprehensive about the autopsy report as well. “So we made doctors swear to reveal the truth about the autopsy findings after they finished their job,” says Syed Abdul Hai, Neelofar’s father. “After they came out, Dr Nighat Chiloo put her hands on her face and cried ‘O Allah, better grant the daughters of Kashmir death. This treatment is not met even with animals’.”

The woman who gave Asiya her funeral bath supports Dr Nighat’s statement. “Her private parts indicated that she had been raped,” she says. A mother of three children, she maintains that figuring out whether a rape had been committed in case of an unmarried woman was easier.

While Dr Nighat’s statement and the woman’s testimony led people to conclude that Neelofar and Asiya had been raped, the preliminary autopsy report by the team of doctors is yet to be made public. In fact, Omar Abdullah, in a news conference on Monday stated that no rape had been established. The contradictory statements by Dr Nighat and the government stirred unrest across the valley. Omar later retracted his statement when he said that ‘something had happened.’

Experts, however, say that any conclusion reached should be backed by forensic examination of the smear. The report, according to government, is lying with the FSL. However, the circumstances put a question mark on the credibility of the government institutions.

Apart from the PV examination, which experts say is complicated in case of a body with a rigor mortis – a condition where body grows stiff after six hours of death. In such a case, the smear tests can prove helpful by identifying the presence of sperms and even lead to identification of the culprit by DNA mapping.

Tracking the culprit only on the basis of sperm samples, however, is even more challenging unless the circumstantial evidence has pointed to some suspects. People in Shopian allege security forces for the ‘heinous crime’. They base their allegation on the manner in which the bodies reached the spot where search parties finally located them.

The spot where Neelofar’s body was found is just a couple of hundred meters away from the CRPF camp and is in close vicinity of District Police Lines building that houses hundreds of policemen. Any movement of people in this area, locals point out, should have been tracked by the CRPF who maintain a constant vigil at night by searchlights. “Why wouldn’t they be able to track people who placed the body there at night,” says Neelofar’s brother, Syed Shahnawaz.

The family members believe that the body was placed at the spot rather than being washed ashore by the water current. They say that they visited the spot twice before they stopped their search at 2:30 am that night. “The body was placed near the stream after we left. How otherwise would it reach there?” says Shakeel.

Victims’ family also alleges police of lowering their guard by abandoning the search till dawn. They say that the time gap gave culprits crucial time to place the body near the stream

LOSING ON HOME TURF

2009-06-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

Peoples Democratic Party’s rise in Kashmir politics was sudden. The party struck all the right cords of politics to reach a position of strength until the debacle it faced in recent Parliament elections. Has the party reached a climax? Will it fall further? What could lie in store for the party in the future?

Zubair A. Dar

The assembly elections of 2008 had brought hope for 28-year-old Tariq Ahmad Shah of Bijbehara. A paramedic, Shah had been looking for a government job since 2006, when he completed his training. The local leaders in Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had promised jobs if they returned to power. Shah voted for PDP. Across south Kashmir, young men like Shah rallied behind the party and it secured 21 seats, a marked gain from 16 in the 2002 elections.

But the electoral victory couldn’t translate into power. Congress forged an alliance with National Conference (NC) to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir. As the 2009 Parliament elections approached, Shah – the unemployed young man – changed his mind. He voted for the party in power – NC.

“After the assembly elections, we went to meet the Omar Abdullah. He patiently listened and promised us help,” says Shah. Shah is a member of an association of unemployed paramedics and says that the union members discussed the issue of voting before the parliament elections. “Members unanimously decided to vote for NC as the prospect of help from government was bright.”

And as the counting trends in Parliament election 2009 poured in, the mood in the PDP camp sank. Any chances of victory in north Kashmir’s Baramulla constituency had been made bleak by Sajjad Gani Lone’s decision to contest. And Srinagar parliament constituency had never been a PDP stronghold. But the hardest blow came from its presumed bastion – south Kashmir. PDP had won 12 out of 16 seats in south Kashmir in 2008. This time, the voters had chosen NC.

Though the overall voter turnout in south Kashmir was low, shocking results came from two assembly segments – Wachi and Islamabad. PDP president Mehbooba Mufti had won the Wachi assembly constituency securing 12,810 votes against his NC rival who got 4474 votes. In Islamabad, party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had defeated his NC rival Mirza Mehboob Beg by a margin of 4891 votes. This time, however, Beg managed a comeback. PDP’s candidate in parliament elections, Peer Mohammad Hussain, trailed Beg by 1053 votes in Wachi. In Islamabad too, Beg managed a thin lead – he got 8620 votes while Hussain got 8554.

The effect was visible in other constituencies as well. Shopian, that had elected Abdul Razak Wagay of PDP to assembly in December 2008 favoured NC’s Beg in parliament elections. In a high turnout election, the electronic voting machines had recorded 52.72 percent votes in 2008. This time, the voter turnout was low.

Whilst the low turnout is regarded as a major reason for PDP’s loss, the elections have exposed a fault line in PDP’s electoral politics. Youth across Shopian and Kulgam districts decided to stay away from voting, delivering a blow to PDP and severely reducing their chances of winning the south Kashmir parliament seat. In 2008, they say, they had consciously decided to vote for PDP after Jamaat-e-Islami followers showed intentions of participation.

“Jamaat-e-Islami followers had decided to vote and they were making it evident. So there was no fear of reaction,” says Tufail Amin Malik, a resident of village Memander near Shopian. With Jamaat followers’ participation, the taboo associated with voting became easier to overcome. “In our group, my friends and I decided to vote for PDP. The party had brought us relief from security forces’ excesses,” says Malik.

In Kulgam district, the Jamaat factor was even more visible. Voters identified with the pen and inkpot symbol, the symbol of Muslim United Front, and voted for the symbol, shifting the balance in favour of PDP.

When Sayeed founded PDP in 1999, he competed with other parties to get the pen and inkpot which being an independent symbol was up for grabs. A draw of lots at Deputy Commissioner’s office in Budgam settled the issue. Mounted on a green flag, the symbol along with the party revitalised Kashmir’s electoral politics at a time when government and separatists had taken two extreme positions and the then ruling party, NC, faced credibility crisis.

Before forming PDP, Sayeed had been active in Kashmir politics as a Congress leader. However, after setting up a regional party, he came up with a new agenda. The seasoned politician understood well that Congress’s unionist agenda had never succeeded in valley and the only alternative was a Kashmir centric agenda.

“The bedrock of the agenda was to restore the self respect and dignity of the people by giving them rights that citizens in any democratic set up deserve,” says Mehbooba Mufti, PDP president. Thus PDP projected a “healing touch” agenda and vehemently opposed the human rights violations.

NC’s popularity on the other hand was on a decline. Its alliance with BJP-led NDA had come under severe criticism after New Delhi binned the autonomy proposal. Gujrat pogrom added to the resentment.

“NC had appeared to surrender to temptations of power and given up its Kashmir centric politics,” says Prof Gul Mohammad Wani of political science at Kashmir University.

PDP had the perfect opportunity to fill the vacuum. And they grabbed this with both hands.

The father-daughter duo began visiting slain militant’s homes. After coming to power in 2002, PDP called militants ‘our boys’ and started releasing separatist leaders from jails. Soon, the party demanded opening of Jhelum Valley Road and other travel points across the Line of Control. This policy found many supporters.

“There was a sense of siege and separation which had taken over our part of state in wake of partition. State was divided against its wishes,” says Mehbooba Mufti.

Unlike Farooq, Mufti Sayeed had his share of luck while being in power. The composite dialogue process between New Delhi and Islamabad was on track. Post 9/11, militancy was on a decline as the situation forced Pakistan to control militant groups on its own territory. Sayeed, greatly benefited from the new situation and set out to ease security restrictions. New Delhi was also engaging a faction of All Parties Hurriyat Conference in the dialogue process.

“Mufti Sayeed thus was in the know how of things being discussed with Islamabad,” says Prof. Wani. “People began to perceive that Mufti was no longer a manipulator that he had been for a better part of his life.” Wani says that flagging off of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh was a clear indication that the opening points were an initiative of New Delhi rather than Mufti.

As Ghulam Nabi Azad took over from Mufti Sayeed, PDP began to further its political agenda vehemently. It took steam out of NC’s autonomy demand by including an external dimension to the resolution of Kashmir issue. A party that had begun its chapter in Kashmir politics with ‘peace with dignity’ slogan had finally ended up at proposing Kashmir resolution through self rule. The main proposal of the self rule was a cross LoC senate with political, economic, legislative and security powers.

“The external dimension had earlier been discussed as well,” says Prof Wani.

Kashmir Study Group (KSG) established by Kashmiri businessman Farooq Kathwari in 1996, had also proposed “suzerainty” on similar lines.

However, PDP could not deliver on all the promises it made. New Delhi never initiated a dialogue with militants, as PDP had promised. The Centre-Hurriyat talks largely failed. The process of demilitarisation – an issue that began with PDP’s demand for thinning of troops and projected by media as demilitarisation – also failed, especially after New Delhi was irked. Sensing the popularity of the word, PDP had held on to the demand of demilitarisation that has much wider dimensions than thinning of troops. Troops did not even move out of the orchards and other agricultural land. But the party went on to take up issue after issue despite failure on many fronts.

Despite setbacks like Amarnath land row, PDP’s political manoeuvring and poll management secured the party 15.35 percent votes in J&K in the Assembly elections –increase of six percent over 2002. It also emerged as the highest vote getter in Kashmir valley, pushing National Conference to number two.

“It (PDP) was able to cash on the floating vote, especially that of the Jamaat-e-Islami who have a history of hostility with NC. They have not forgotten the destruction post Bhutto’s hanging,” says Prof Wani. “Mufti was able to take that vote along strategically not ideologically. Jamaat perceived Mufti as lesser evil than NC.”

What then went wrong with PDP in the parliament elections?

As reports poured in that Jamaat-e-Islami followers had voted for PDP, the pro-separatism party that largely relies on organisational discipline sought explanations from its cadre for voting in assembly elections.

“This largely restricted the voters in parliament elections,” says Wani. “The restriction limited other floating voters from casting their vote and PDP suffered.”

Beg says that voter patterns of 2008 assembly elections showed that Jamaat-e-Islami was secretly trying to rout NC despite a boycott call from the party leaders. “But in the process, they got exposed,” he says.

But that was not all. NC had entered the contest for Parliament berth from a position of advantage. The party allied with Congress that has its own vote bank in South Kashmir. And the strategy paid off. Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed of Congress, a rival of PDP, worked hard for Beg. The direction, insiders in the party say, had come from the party’s high command as Rahul Gandhi had asked leaders to report back on votes polled in each Congress MLAs constituency.

“Joint candidature of NC and Congress helped,” says Mehboob Beg.

Despite his loss in Assembly elections, Beg was considered to have a wider appeal as compared to his PDP rival Peer Mohammad Hussain. Beg, scion of a prominent political family in south Kashmir, had been the provincial president of NC until Farooq Abdullah reorganised the party after 2008 elections.

Hussain did not have any such credentials. He had begun his political career in Al-Fatah and later joined plebiscite front lead by Mehboob Beg’s father Mirza Afzal Beg in South Kashmir. It was the Beg family that later accommodated Hussain and gave him a job. Hussain was a strong candidate for Devsar constituency in assembly elections, but gave up his candidature in favour of his son-in-law Peer Mansoor Hussain. But he lacked a pan-south Kashmir appeal. PDP in the past had fielded party stalwarts like Mehbooba Mufti from south Kashmir and Hussain was no match.

Mufti Sayeed also had lost the appeal among the floating voters as power no longer was on his side. “In assembly elections, Mufti projected himself as the future chief minister and gave an impression that the alliance with Congress was going to continue in future,” says Beg.

“Till 2008 elections, Mufti had been able to keep the floating vote intact and organised a grass root party structure that would propagate his policies,” adds Prof Wani.

Beg this time had the rebels and independents on his side as well. Mohammad Rafiq Khan, the independent contestant from Devsar in Islamabad who bagged 8,000 votes in assembly elections had joined the party.

“Some of the independents found an opportunity in joining NC. Their aim is to contest the next assembly elections on NC ticket,” says Prof Wani. “It was minute engineering.”

“There was resentment among people at the time of 2002 elections. Mufti became a mascot of change,” adds Mehboob Beg. “But he could not fool people for long. We have a longer history of struggle for Kashmir issue than any party.”

Political analysts, however, differ with Beg. They say that Muftis’ had successfully eaten away at the peasant vote bank of NC by giving concessions to orchard owners and farmers. PDP withdrew toll tax on apple exports and also did away with irrigation tax.

“It was a social engineering whereby Mufti had secured votes in peasantry that had been traditionally voting for NC since land to tiller reforms,” says Prof Wani.

With these policies, Sayeed had reached the climax of Kashmir endeavour. A bit of democracy in the party – Muzaffar Hussain Beigh had managed to be the deputy CM after Mufti Sayeed’s chief ministerial tenure was over – party had been able to keep its youth brigade intact.

But the failure to form an alliance with Congress in the state or at the centre turned PDP’s electoral victory into a loss. Despite increasing the seat tally to 21, the party had to sit in the opposition. The party’s vote share though was growing. In 1999, when the party first fought Parliament elections, its vote share in Jammu and Kashmir was 5.65 percent. In Legislative Assembly elections of 2002, its share grew to 9.04 percent. It formed the government while National Conference – with 28.22 percent had to sit in opposition.

The Parliament elections of 2004 took PDP’s vote share up to 11.94 percent. By 2008, its vote share had fattened by another 3.41 percent. Despite its loss in 2009 parliament elections, PDP had taken its vote share to 20.08 percent. But the votes had come from other constituencies as much as from the south Kashmir bastion. While Peer Mohammad Hussain secured 143093 votes in south Kashmir, Iftikhar Hussain Ansari - PDP fielded him in Srinagar against NC’s Farooq Abdullah - bagged 1,16,793 votes. PDP’s north Kashmir candidate, Mohammad Dilawar Mir also registered 1,38,208 votes.

At the party’s nerve centre is Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, a septuagenarian with experience of politics in state as well as New Delhi. But the strategist is getting old. Another six years and Sayeed might not have the same energy level as now.

The younger brigade in PDP is energetic, ready to work at grassroots, but lack experience and vision. Mehbooba Mufti, whose role will be pivotal in determining the future of the party, is not regarded in the same league as her father. Her election to Indian parliament, insiders say, did not bring desired results for the party. Unlike her father, she could not network with leaders and parties at New Delhi. Her father is more acceptable to New Delhi than her. Another major issue facing the party is that of political renegades – PDP has many in its ranks and has suffered in the past as well.

The situation favours National Conference whose young leader Omar Abdullah is more acceptable to Delhi than his flamboyant father. Loyalty in NC camp is deep rooted compared to PDP.

Can Mehbooba Mufti defend the party especially after ruling NC’s new look approach to enter the middle ground of Kashmir politics?

Party ideologue, Nayeem Akhter, says that it was too premature to write Mufti Sayeed off. “Mufti Sayeed has changed the political reality in Kashmir. We are the only party to pursue a pro-Kashmir agenda within the (Indian) constitution,” he says. “Mufti Sayeed believes that accession has taken place and Kashmir continues to be a part of India. So the issues we are raising are within the framework of constitution.”

“Mufti Sayeed, over the years, has been very open to suggestions. Unlike Farooq, he is less witty but takes more intellectual inputs,” says Prof Wani.

The differences with Congress had been a feature of coalition throughout the last three years of Congress-PDP rule. Analysts say that Mufti Sayeed had begun to push his pro-Kashnmir agenda too far. Though it withdrew support after the Amaranth land row bringing down Ghulam Nabi Azad government, the situation still seemed under control. In fact, senior Congressman Pranab Mukherjee visited Kashmir to indicate that coalition could continue. But the final blow was dealt by the controversy over National Security Act. Both NC and PDP opposed the application of this law in Jammu and Kashmir. Mehbooba Mufti’s reaction, insiders say, was more adverse than Omar Abdullah’s. And that became the turning point.

“But PDP has emerged as a party that is likely to stay in Kashmir politics for a longer duration. Writing them off for a setback in one election will not be fair” says Noor Mohammad Baba, head of the political science department at Kashmir University.

A lot will depend upon how the situation between New Delhi and Islamabad plays in the coming years. With Congress returning to power in New Delhi with strength, future of Kashmir centric political parties will hinge on how Kashmir issue is dealt with on bilateral level between India and Pakistan and how Kashmiris are allowed to participate in the dialogue process.

MANAGING THE TURNAROUND

2009-06-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

From defending boycott sternly to campaigning for votes, Sajjad Lone has made a turnaround in four months. Zubair A Dar follows Lone on a campaign trail to find out how the flamboyant television savvy debater justifies his twist on ground.

At a street corner in village Ogmun in Tangmarg area of north Kashmir, Sajjad Gani Lone stands facing a group of people, all passers-by attracted by the motor cavalcade of the ‘separatist’ leader on his poll campaign. He has just come out of the village Masjid where he offered noon prayers. As more men gather around him, 45-year-old Mohammad Akbar Mir sets the discourse.

Enquiring about Sajjad’s purpose of visit, Mir says, “We have seen militants coming to our homes and talking about Azadi. We have seen All Parties Hurriyat Conference now divided in several factions. We are also witness to your divided family – one brother in Hurriyat and other one seeking votes.” In a frail frame, pausing between sentences to regain breath, visibly ailing Mir concludes, “Are we drum-driven cattle?”

The People’s Conference Chairman answers, though complacently. “I never asked people to take up gun. I faced the same hardships that you faced. I have also been interrogated in Papa II, the place where Mufti Sayeed now resides,” he says. Then he poses a few questions of his own.

“I decided to contest because you people voted in the last assembly elections when I was under house arrest. Did not you?” he says. “Your vote forced me to take this route and that is what I have done. Now I have come to you.”

Sajjad, however, conveniently skips some of the questions, especially the dilemma facing every household in his battleground – north Kashmir parliament constituency that he aspires to represent in Indian parliament. The dilemma comes from two separate corners. The first question that every man wants to ask – only Mir had the courage to articulate it – is whether Sajjad would be any different from those parliamentarians that have been representing Kashmir in India’s highest law making body? Second question pertains to development. Can Sajjad fulfil these aspirations while he talks of Kashmir issue and is unlikely to have enough funds at hand if he doesn’t take a place in ministry?

Sajjad’s turnaround from a ‘separatist’ fighting war of words in TV discussions to a leader seeking votes, has come in just four months. While he maintains that he never was a typical separatist, he had been able to manage the rhetoric well. After eight years of occupying middle ground, Sajjad finally decided to take to electoral politics. Political Pundits, whose views he discarded time and again feel vindicated especially after former RAW chief and Kashmir interlocutor, A S Dulat last Saturday said that Lone was about to participate in elections earlier too.

Terming Sajjad plunge in electoral fray in Kashmir ‘a significant event to watch’, Dulat, in an interview with NDTV, said, “He (Sajjad) always had leaning towards India. He was supposed to participate in 2002 assembly elections and later in 2008 as well. But that did not mature.”

Dulat also said that Lone withdrew and had second thoughts on joining electoral fray in 2008 because of the agitation following the Amarnath land row.

Adds Prof Gul Wani of Political Science Department at University of Kashmir, “He (Sajjad) made very measured calculation. He has based it on ground realities like internal chaos in Pakistan and weakening support for separatists. In 2008 assembly elections, he did not contest because they were preceded by mass agitations and every one wrongly predicted that there would be boycott.”

Analysts term Sajjad’s decision more significant in wake of its possible fallouts on separatist politics in Kashmir. “He was a voice in the separatist camp and had an agenda for resolution of Kashmir issue. It is a setback to separatist politics in Kashmir,” says Prof Noor Ahmad Baba, head of the political science department at university of Kashmir.

Sajjad, however, rebuffs these claims. Maintaining that separatism is much bigger than any of its leaders, he says that separatists never owned him and thus should not be affected. He instead cautions against ignoring the wishes of people while terming his new found strategy as a turnaround.

“See, your problem is that you live in a world of your own. You have been with me since morning, has anyone asked this question. They oppose politicians per se, not a single question asking me why did you contest?” says Sajjad. “So is it the journalists who constitute Kashmir? There is a group of 100-150 people who think they constitute Kashmir, which they do not. That is why every prediction we make over Kashmir comes wrong. We thought that there will be 100 percent boycott, 70 percent came out and voted. We refuse to accept the reality as it exists. We become India. As they refuse to accept that Kashmirs are not with them. They are not.”

Sajjad claims that ignoring people’s wishes amounts to treating them as slaves. “We refuse to accept that most of the Kashmiris do not think that boycotting elections is not a way to achieve freedom. They are freedom loving, but they simply know that it multiplies their problems,” says Sajjad. “We are treating our own people as slaves and the result of which is that a strong anti-India sentiment has been erroneously projected as a pro-India vote.”

The People’s Conference chief, however, is not the lone vote-seeker in this parliament election with a separatist past. In his home district Kupwara, another separatist Ghulam Rasool Shah alias Imran Rahi is also seeking votes. Now in Awami National Conference (ANC), Rahi was a militant commander when armed rebellion broke out in Kashmir in 1989. Twice arrested before being finally released in 1995, Rahi formed the Forum for Peaceful Resolution to push for a dialogue over Jammu and Kashmir dispute along with other militant commanders Babar Badr and Bilal Lodi. The group was the first to initiate a dialogue process with New Delhi when they met then home minister S B Chawhan and later also met prime ministers P V Narsimha Rao and H D Devigowda.

“People and parties outside mainstream are always alleged of lacking people’s mandate,” says Rahi. “So we decided to contest as aspirations of people are blacked out from both sides (mainstream as well as separatist).”

Sajjad too appeals people to give him one chance to represent their aspirations in Indian parliament. “If your heart and conscience tells you, please vote for me. But let me assure you, my representation would make you proud,” Sajjad tells people, while shaking hands with people in villages where most knew his father.

They have seen Abdul Gani Lone – first as a Congress MLA and education minister and later as a separatist leader. Some of them admire senior Lone. “Sajjad is the son of a leader who would challenge Sheikh Abdullah in assembly,” says a youth, Bilal, while wooing votes for Sajjad in nearby Karhama village. It is this admiration that Sajjad wants the voters to recall while giving him a chance.

“If you vote for me and I reach the parliament, you would be proud that you had voted for me. I am speaking from my heart and not mind,” he tells his audience.

Campaigning in these small hamlets in Tangmarg area of Baramulla district, Sajjad aims to exploit traditional voters with no party affiliations. The strategy to meet people on street corners and shop pavements in small groups is a well thought out one. Sajjad says that bigger rallies are not as effective as meeting people one by one.

To him, a door to door campaign is more effective than mass rallies where “attendees are dedicated cadres who vote otherwise as well”. He aims to convince common people that his new route is in tune with their aspirations and the force behind the turnaround is people’s participation in assembly elections.

Analysts vary, first about his win possibility to win and second about the ability to represent people’s aspirations.

“If Sajjad wins, he will be representing Kashmir issue in the same way as Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti do,” says Prof Wani. “Speaking about issues like human rights violations, revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, economic drain of Kashmir and power projects is well within the ambit of mainstream politics.”

Wani says that low turnout in south Kashmir could continue and dent his chances of winning. In that case, Wani says, he will be thrown into political wilderness. “He will have no option that to drift more towards unionist politics,” Wani says.

Prof Baba agrees. “If he looses, he will loose his politics as he will be disowned by all. There is no looking back for him,” he says.

Prof Baba, however, believes that Sajjad’s route will be keenly watched. “In case he wins, the line he adopts will be keenly observed,” he says. “Though ground reports suggest that chances of his win are thin.”

Sajjad, confident that he will win given the support he enjoys in Kupwara and Bandipora area, says that his victory would be historical because “it would mean reorienting the struggle and give credibility to Kashmiri clout.”

“Till date, Kashmiri leadership has not been able to assert itself in a vocal manner,” he says. “I always felt that they (Hurriyat) are not fighting a Kashmiri war. They are fighting some other war. There was no strategy. Even when my father was alive, I used to tell him that you guys will never achieve anything because there was no strategy. And when I came in active politics, I just found out that,” he says.

He, however, agrees that a loss would be more personal. “I loose, it will be my personal loss. It will not be detrimental for the Kashmir cause. It will be because people felt that I do not represent the ideology I am taking about,” he says.

Do people receive Sajjad’s turnaround well? In his campaign, the people he meets express development concerns while Sajjad stresses representing political aspirations.

“None of them (voters) is averse to putting Kashmir issue forward. None of them said that do not represent Kashmir,” says Sajjad. “One person in a village came to me and said ‘do not become a traitor’. Same happens at other places,” Sajjad says. “Just because a person is poor and has economic problems doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have political aspirations.”

My traitor’s heart

2009-06-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Zubair A. Dar

The boy can not see. Irfan has lost his sight in an accident, blinding him for life. His mother Rubi has chosen not to see. Four years ago, her renegade husband Aijaz Ahmad Turrey fell to the bullets of an assassin. She didn’t know her husband is dead. She didn’t even see her husband before burial. She was away in Amritsar where she had taken her blind son for treatment. She returned. Her journey of grief and loneliness began from the graveyard itself: there was no one to share her pain.

That evening, she cried alone. The taboo of being a renegade’s widow had immediately led to an untold social boycott. Soon she felt the hateful stares of neighbours and even the relatives were reluctant to visit. A strange silence had gripped her life and she decided to cage herself inside her home – a brick and cement box where three rooms stand over each other with no space even to breathe.

Rubi, 27, is not alone. Like hundreds of families of slain renegades, her story of pain and loneliness is a harsh but hidden social reality of Kashmir. Unlike militants, their deaths were mourned only by the close family. For people, they were traitors to the cause. But even after their violent deaths, the society didn’t forgive. The government too didn’t care. For them, counter-insurgents were nothing more than pawns in a larger battle where they came handy to do the dirty job outside the realm of law. They were not soldiers. Thus a payment of one lakh rupees as ex-gratia by the administration became the price of the life of each of these young men.

Rubi’s story starts from a nearby house in Janglat Manidi in Islamabad town where she lived with her parents. Turrey, a cousin, had joined counterinsurgents. The families decided to marry the two in 1996.

“He was promised that he would get a job in police. My mother said that a government job was a secure earning opportunity for a lifetime and persuaded me to marry him,” says Rubi. Rubi chose to tie the knot.

Like Rubi, her husband Aijaz Ahmad Turrey too had made a choice, a hard one. In 1995, he joined the government sponsored militia, Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, a militant outfit that had switched sides to fight militancy in Kashmir. Many of the counterinsurgents had gone across for arms training but government allowed them to operate as against militants. They were largely controlled by their own commanders. The government paid Turrey rupees 1,500 a month. Ikhwan commanders promised assimilation in state’s police force.

Years after Turrey’s death, the family – Rubi, her two children Irfan and Ubaid and Turry’s mother Habla – fail to mix with people in their hometown, Islamabad, where men like Turrey controlled the affairs for many years.

“I do not go anywhere now, nowhere except for my parents place. No one comes to visit us except them,” says Rubi. “I have no job.” To earn a living after her husband’s death, she roasted cattle heads that would clear them of hair. The trader shifted his business and Rubi were left jobless. “We do not go seeking jobs any more. We dread a reaction,” she says.

Like Rubi, at least a hundred families in south Kashmir Islamabad district have lost their male head to counter insurgency. In mid-nineties, at least 250 men across south Kashmir’s Islamabad district joined the anti-insurgency group. A sketchy record maintained by renegade commander Kuka Parray’s son Imtiyaz Parray shows that their total number across Kashmir was 4000. Their job was to fight a battle that security forces were finding difficult to handle. The period is considered to be one of the worst in terms of human rights violations. At least 1500 of them have been killed in retaliatory attacks by militants. Their families now face an untold social sanction.

Men like Turrey were lured by jobs and a security cover against harassment – from militants as well as security forces.

Why would Turrey need security? The armed rebellion had necessitated it for every Kashmiri boy with militant ambitions. Turrey was no different. Swept by the wave that drove thousands of young boys in Kashmir to join militant outfits, Turrey left home one night in early nineties to join Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. His mother, Habla, calls it KLF. She does not remember the year or date, all she can tell is that Turrey was ‘an innocent boy then.’ “Only 40 days had passed since his father’s death,” Habla recalls.

“His friends told me that he had gone across the border for training. But he returned home some nights later. Still the army tortured him twice. He tried to stay home afterwards, but HM (militants) would raid our house looking for him. I would tell him to run to his grandmother’s,” says Habla.

Turrey was not married then. But the pressure was telling upon his behaviour, his mother says. Then one day, he decided to join Ikhwan and worked closely with police and security forces in fighting militants.

But the married life was more of an affliction than a respite. “The Ikhwan camp was just outside our home. Still he came home only once a week, that too at night. He had compulsions.”

While Turrey joined to ‘save himself’, others just wanted to vent the disappointment in their lives through the barrel of their guns. Nisar Ahmad Mir, another renegade, was killed in the same militant attack that killed Turrey.

“A woman wearing burqa (veil) came to their camp with the news that an IED had been planted in the market near Janglat Mandi. The two rushed to the spot where militants fired upon them,” says Jehangir Khan, a renegade commander from village Rampore in neighbouring Mattan area. Khan now heads the left over counterinsurgent group.

Unlike Turrey, Mir had joined to escape an emotional ordeal. His wife, whom he married after a long love affair, had died of a brain haemorrhage. “She was beautiful. You would not find her match in entire Kashmir,” says Mir’s mother, Taja. “After her death, my son just wanted to run away from home. I told him not to join Ikhwan. So many people tried to persuade him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

At the family’s mud and brick home in Mir Danter locality of Islamabad town, testimonies of Mir’s romance are collected in an album. One of the photos shows Mir kissing his wife, Mehbooba – an expression few in Kashmir would like to capture in camera and make public.

After joining the renegades, Mir rarely came home. “He did not even mind to care for his three children,” Taja says. In their dark bedroom in the old house they share with other relatives, Mir’s children – Zubair, Faisal and Azra – live with their grandmother. Zubair, the eldest, quit education after ninth class and now works as a labourer – in the fields, in construction – anywhere and everywhere he finds an opportunity to earn the family a meal. Faisal and Azra study in government schools where fees are generally exempted.

Government paid an ex-gratia of Rupees one lakh to the family after Mir’s death. Taja refuses to accept the money. “I better beg. How could I spend the blood money to buy groceries for feeding these children,” she says. “I have put it in an account. When they (children) grow up may be they use it then.”

Other families too have received the ex-gratia. But the pain of loneliness refuses to go. Taja says that her other two sons live separately. “No one comes here. No one except Khuda,” she says. Her eyes sink deep into the sockets as she speaks.

“My husband died 20 years ago. I lived and toiled for my children. Now I am alone,” Taja says as the wrinkles on her face crease to run deeper. Her decaying teeth are barely visible when she speaks. She doesn’t complain about relatives alone, she is hurt the way government has treated her family after her son’s death.

A few weeks ago, Taja heard that Zubair’s name appeared in the list of people whom the government plans to give jobs. She went to check at District Development Commissioner’s office. “No one tells me anything there. I just hope he gets a job. He has a sister and a brother to take care of. How long would I live,” Taja says. “If my son would not have joined Ikhwan, we would have been better off.”

Like Taja, Rubi too aspires to get a job. She wants to remind the government that her husband had laid down his life for them. “I have filed a job application in the DC’s office. They say they would pay me more money,” Rubi says. “But I want a job. I am even ready to work as a peon at some office.”

Rubi aspires that the job will help her overcome her solitude besides helping her feed her children and mother-in-law. She says that the circumstances necessitate that.

Rubi’s mother-in-law insists her to marry again. “The boy could live with us here and take care of all of us,” Habla says. But Rubi doesn’t agree. She fears the marriage would be a disappointment.

“The person I marry may start digging into my past. I better take care of my children alone,” she says. “My husband would often say that he would quit the force if he doesn’t get a proper job. That couldn’t happen. Why dream about things that just are not possible?” she regrets.

Other renegades, who survived the 13 years of war against militants, regret too. They feel guilty of killing their own people, some of whom they knew closely.

Jahangir Khan says that they were “used - to fight their own people and then disposed off”. Jahangir now lives in a Kashmiri Pandit’s house in Islamabad town. He says that he is living as a migrant in his own community because no one owns him.

“We were exploited by the security forces, government as well as their own commanders,” he says. “We gave our lives. We brought down the militancy, floated a political party (Awami League) and announced our participation in the elections in 1996. The political leaders who now oppose us were hiding in other countries then,” he says. “What did we get in return?”

Khan remembers the beginning of the counter insurgency movement. “The commanders, especially Liyaqat, Nana, Tahir would meet army officers and then tell their boys what the strategy was. To keep them going, they would promise jobs and money,” he says. “No one now cares to check how they live and feed their families. Every boy who survived now feels to have betrayed his own people. We killed those whom we knew personally. There were excesses as well in certain cases. But who made us do that,” Khan says.

The sketchy record that Jahangir maintains shows 100 renegades were killed by militants in different attacks in Islamabad and Kulgam areas. “But no family member of the victim has been provided a job,” he says. Out of those who survived, around 50 have been adjusted in the Territorial Army. Some still work with police as SPOs and are paid 3000 rupees a month. “Others are hiding. Few who dare, go out, work as vendors on pavements,” Khan says.

Comparing the lives of ordinary renegade and their commanders, Khan says that unlike the foot soldiers of Turrey’s rank, commanders amassed huge money out of counter insurgency. “At Taqiya Beram Shah, Liyaqat lived in a hut. Now he has made crores. He went to Gujarat for relief distribution. Did he distribute some relief to the boys who fought with him?” Khan says.

In total, Territorial Army has accommodated 250 renegades. Few more have been assimilated in CRPF. But the families of renegades who were killed are finding it hard to survive amid ostracism and poverty. Each day Rubi wakes up, life appears to her a punishment for decisions she never took.

Ladakh Festival

2009-04-29T02:55:00.001-07:00

Luring the tourist

Zubair A Dar

Leh: Two round metallic plates of Baikul, an ethnic musical instrument, join by a clap and create a vibration that flows to every corner of Spituk Monastery’s Chamra (square courtyard) on a barren hill top in Leh. The bell has already announced the beginning of a performance, calling for the attention of the audience – mostly foreign tourists – who sit on the ladders descending to the Chamra, line the edges and even occupy the small canopy that covers part of the courtyard and fences the descending slope of the hill. A Nalchak (stick) strikes the Nal (Ladakhi drum) and the beat soon synchronizes with the vibrating rhythm of the Dungches . Tungchen, a five feet long pipe now comes alive.
Four dancers appear from the gallery on top of the stairs. All eyes fix at the performers as they descend into the square. Their colourful Chamgos dress and a mask covering the face and head sets them out in the distinct landscape of this cold desert. A cluster of photographers encircle them for close-ups. The orchestrated descend leads the dancers to the Chamra, where they perform Chams – a spiritual dance based on the theme of the destruction of the evil.
“The performance of the dance will develop courage and dignity besides keeping the performers away from evil,” a background announcement by a woman about the dance informs. It also warns against clapping for the performance as the dance is spiritual and not just entertaining. “It helps the performers kill three inner evils,” the announcer adds.
Chams is the main attraction of the two week long festival sponsored by the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Department to showcase the culture of the Himalayan region. But the spiritual dance is not the only activity to look out for during the festival days. There are pageantry cultural troops in colourful costumes that march through the markets in the evenings. There are music concerts, a polo tournament, camel safaris, archery competitions, river rafting and cultural song and dance performances at different places in and around the town- each forming an important part of the extravaganza called the Ladakh Festival.
“The main aim of the festival is to lengthen the tourist season by two more months. The season earlier lasted only till august,” says Chief Executive Councilor and Chairman of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Leh), Chering Dorjay. And the addition to the Ladakh’s rich tourist potential has yielded good results. “Only this year, more than 60,000 tourists have visited Leh and we expect the figure to cross 70,000. It is a record,” says Nisar Hussain, an officer in Tourism Department in Leh. “Last year, we received 51,000 tourists,” he adds.
The festival is not just another cultural show. It is journey through Ladakh’s Buddhist past and its culture that is scattered on several thousand square kilometers across a barren land dotted by small villages and a few towns. Knowing well what touches the weakest nerve of an ancient culture seeking tourist, the festival travels to monasteries, auditoriums, river valleys and villages.
“Having the dances at monasteries makes it historically rich. It is better than watching the dances at auditoriums,” says Nicole Miller, who is travelling India along with her husband, Luke Miller. “The festival was mentioned in the guide book. We watched a lot of it even in rain,” she adds.
The two sit glued to the square compound where the Chams is performed. As each group of dancers appears from the balcony, Luke keenly awaits with his camera for a click to save the moment for posterity.
Chams begins with a dance by Hashank (teacher) and Hutuk (disciples). Hashank, in Buddhist philosophy is the sponsor for 16 Arahads that spread Buddhism. Following a particular theme, it ends with the Shawa (deer) dance in celebration of the animal which is very harmless in nature and thus connects the philosophy of life with the nature of the animal. In one of the sequences, the dancers wear masks with tongues protruding out. From the mouth, parts of body like legs and head appear. “There is no visible form of the inner evil. The parts depict the killing of that evil,” the announcer told us.
In the evening, the festival moves to Leh’s main market. Groups of dancers appear from behind the crowd and enter the small space left for them by the jostling onlookers. They dance to the tune of the drums as hundreds of cameras click for photos – the performance resembling a fashion parade in some metropolis. Among the performers is Dadul Skarhe, an archer whose photo appears on the brochure of the Ladakh Festival. Dressed in printed yellow robes and armed with a sword, a bow and arrows, he sings with others as he marches through the market with co-performers in two rows along with hundreds of spectators.
“I learned archery from my elders when I was a kid,” says Skarhe, a contractor by profession and now awarded by the Archery Association of Ladakh. He performs a story of the legendry king Kesar and his queen.
There are Ghazal dancers, a form of song and music that came to Ladakh from Baltistan. The drums and pipes in the background bring the audience alive. As each group finishes, a new one with a different cultural dress makes its entry. One that is most sought after by the tourists is the group of Brokpas from Aryan. The four women include Yangchen Lamo from Garkhon village of Aryans. She can not speak, but her expressions and beauty attracts most of the flash lights.
Amid this nostalgia, however, the charm of the polo in Leh is not lost. At the finals of the polo tournament, thousands of spectators gather. “In a town with a population of 25,000 only, the gathering is unprecedented,” a tourism official says. Such is the interest shown by the population that the Chief Executive Councilor of Leh joined the concluding dance at the closing ceremony along with tourists and locals, much to the amusement of the audience.

June 2008 Uprising

2009-04-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

Fuelling Gen-X fire in Kashmir

Zubair A. Dar

If the nine days of uprising in June 2008 by Kashmir's Generation X represented anything, it is the unpredictability of peace in the valley. And now it is crystal clear that it takes little provocation, or just one small mistake, to push Kashmir back to the familiar revolt of 1990. The reasons too are not unfamiliar: first the separatist sentiment is well and alive; and then, New Delhi has literally wasted the window of opportunity provided to it by the changed international circumstances after 9/11, the successful Assembly elections of 2002 and Pakistan's u-turn on its traditional Kashmir policy. In fact, New Delhi even failed to understand that the decline in violence and a boom in tourism have made it compulsory to address the larger issues of justice to heal the festering wounds of the last 18 years. Instead, it essentially followed a policy of forget and move ahead, and thus, failure was destined.
When a several thousand-strong protesting mob of young men marched towards the clock tower in Srinagar's central Lal Chowk area on Friday, June 27, it was not only the climax of this nine-day uprising: it was the moment that defined Kashmir's return to revolt. The only difference this time, however, is that this post-1990 generation is pelting stones and not firing bullets. Kalashnikovs though are not far away – Kashmir has enough of weapons in 2008.
Unlike other protests, generally limited to a particular area, the uprising that began on June 23 ended only when the state government revoked the land transfer order to the Amarnath Shrine Board on July 1. For the first time since 1947, such a major government decision had been rolled back under public pressure. Understandably so, because the protests spanned the length and breadth of Kashmir valley and witnessed participation by a cross section of youth – from students to labourers, private sector employees to public servants and daily wagers to successful young entrepreneurs.
While the coalition government bowed – and even fell following the withdrawal of support by the main ally Peoples Democratic Party – the protests also made it amply clear that return of secessionist sentiments in Kashmir just needs a provocation, an alibi to vent. The idea that development was an antidote to the separatist sentiment has once again been proven incorrect. The return of peace and normalcy to Kashmir recently has been a truth, but without serious efforts for a resolution to the actual problem and a government strategy to turn the status quo into a permanent solution to Kashmir makes this calm dangerously reversible.
To understand this nine-day uprising, its complexion and shocking intensity, it is essential to look at the frontlines of these stone pelting mobs that marched the streets. Here are few examples.
Imtiyaz, a medical sciences graduate, was one among those thousands that chanted slogans while jostling with other protesters to hoist a green flag on the Clock Tower that Friday, despite heavy police and CRPF paramilitary presence, who looked on helplessly.
The medic gives two main reasons for the spontaneous protests that drove him to the city centre. "There is perpetual anger against India that had remained inside our hearts over the past 18 years. This was a chance to vent it. We always felt subjugated by the occupation but our protests were divided. This time, we united to protest for a cause," says the wold be doctor.
Drilling a hole in New Delhi's policies towards Kashmir, Imtiyaz says, "We trusted India when the peace process started. But what did it give us? Only disappointment! Those of us who argued in favour of India's peace initiative were proved wrong." He says that New Delhi had neglected the fact that 80,000 people had died in Kashmir. "They laid their lives while trying to secure a right. We can not forget their sacrifices," Imtiyaz asserts.
To this central Kashmir youth, the Amarnath land transfer issue was just a trigger that prompted the youth to demonstrate their pent up anger. "The yatra has been there for many decades. No one ever objected. But the (union) home ministry, through the governor, tried to strengthen the occupation, and Amarnath was used as a tool. The plan was to create places inaccessible for a common Kashmiri and thus dilute our identity." Among those protesting was Feroze Ahmad Rah, a bus conductor from downtown Srinagar, shot dead by CRPF personnel at Nowhatta, near Srinagar's Jamia Masjid. A day later, Sameer Ahmad Batloo, a 23-year-old driver from Srinagar too was shot. But their families do not regret their deaths.
"It (Amarnath land transfer) was a major issue," says Sameer's father, Ghulam Mohammad Batloo. "Today, they had occupied a piece of land in Pahalgam. Tomorrow they could reach our neighbourhoods and the next day drive us out of our houses." Adds his uncle, "Whoever died was destined to die. In the end, we won."
Shakeel Ahmad Dar, a Bandipora youth, was among the 50,000 protesters who marched past army camps, chanting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans, besides voicing the demand for revocation of land transfer order. "I could not bear the sale of my country's land to a body that does not represent us. Who are the members of the Shrine Board? How many members are Kashmiri?" the 24-year-old questions. "I earn enough to feed my family and have employed three people. But the protest was not about employment. It was the question of our Kashmiri identity. When I heard that people across the state were protesting, I also decided to join them," he adds.
Shakeel, who led the protests from his north Kashmir village to the nearby Bandipora town, had come to know about the developments in different parts of the valley from his friends. "Friends from different places contacted me on mobile phone and we exchanged SMSes about the situation. I would inform other people about what I knew from friends," says Shakeel. "The cable television and newspapers discussed the protests in great detail."
Analysts say that this horizontal communication at individual levels about developments in particular areas played a major role in turning the protests that started from Kashmir University, into a mass uprising.
While those who protested and survived consider it a moral victory, for the rest, who could not pelt stones, role playing happened a different way. Farooq Ahmad Rather, a history student at the post graduate department of Kashmir University could not protest. Due to the violence and police action, he and his friends had got stuck inside the campus. But the ferocity of stone pelting and the pitched battles fought with the police and security forces across the valley inspired Farooq to contribute 'in whatever way' he could. The youth, along with his colleagues at the university, donated blood for the treatment of injured. "There were many who were physically weaker than me. They were protesting out on the streets. I could not, because I was trapped here and any protest could have put the hostel's security at stake," he says, while sitting in the boys' hostel in Kashmir University. "I donated blood for the treatment of the injured."
This south Kashmir boy has his own reasons for justifying the protest. "The Amarnath land transfer just became the immediate cause. There are other important factors like the occupation by Indian army and the sentiment of people for achieving freedom," says the history student.
Adds Farooq's friend, Syed Adil Andrabi, a student at the department of Law at Kashmir University, "We had been receiving messages on cell phones that hospitals were short of blood as the number of injured was increasing. So we sat with the president of the student's union and decided to organise a blood donation camp." Adil says that the response to their initiative was higher than they had ever expected. "Whosoever we met or called on phone, consented to donate blood. Even girl boarders and the physically challenged students came forward."
Adil believes that protesting against the land transfer was his 'right and duty as a Kashmiri.' "I would have pelted stones the way others did. But I was caught in this hostel and there was no way I could do that. So we came forward to donate blood."
Separatists see the development as the beginning of a new era that would mark the end of the one that began in 1989, and saw hundreds of thousands alienated youth take to the streets to express their anguish. Sajad Gani Lone of People's Conference looks at the uprising as a takeover by the new generation from the previous one. "It is much more intense than 1989, and totally indigenous. It is a mass movement. The sentiments of secession seems to have percolated right down to the ground level," says Sajad, while adding that nine-day uprising had shifted the clout back to Kashmir. "The clout earlier was either in India or Pakistan. Keys to the resolution of the dispute have now come to Kashmir. What we saw in the nine days, I believe is not the end, and we will see this again, with higher frequency. May be the issues will be different."
Sajad says that the biggest lesson is for the Indian State to learn. "Kashmiris came forward in the peace process, which failed to bear any fruit. But India apparently was unaware of the intensity of this sentiment. The Indian State has now learnt that the peace process has to be focused on the people of Kashmir."
Separatist hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who has lately been very critical of Pakistan's changed policy over Kashmir, views the developments as a message to the world that 'Kashmir's struggle is both indigenous and peaceful'. "The way people protested on the streets of Kashmir has proved two things. First is that our struggle is not dependent on Pakistan. The mass protests were completely blacked out by the Pakistan's media, but we still succeeded in achieving our goal. Second is that our struggle is not dependent on gun," says Geelani.
JKLF's Yaseen Malik has a different take on the situation. "I had been saying in Delhi as well as Islamabad that both the countries are under an illusion. They thought that Kashmiris are worn out, while the fact was that the two countries were pushing the Kashmiri nation to a new revolution. People have serious doubts regarding the institution of the peace process and it's necessary to speed up the peace process and resolve the Kashmir issue on a priority basis."
While the ground situation is reflective of a strong resentment against New Delhi as well as Islamabad, whether the two countries listen to the streets in Kashmir will determine which way Kashmir will go in the coming days.

Unearthing grave crimes

2009-04-29T02:41:00.000-07:00

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---

War over water

2009-04-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

Ecological implications be damned. India and Pakistan use rivers as strategic weapons against each other.

Zubair A Dar

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may not have been right about a lot of things, but he was, when he predicted that the Indo-Pakistan Indus Water Treaty – brokered by the World Bank in 1960 – contained the “germs of a future conflict”. Interestingly, four of the six rivers of the Indus water basin flow through Kashmir’s mountains and valleys from Tibet and water the plains in India and Pakistan. And Kashmir, whose water resources have been divided between India and Pakistan under the Treaty, is the ground zero of this dispute between the two neighbours.

The latest in the series is Kishanganga hydel power project that National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited plans to build near the Line of Control in north Kashmir. The project draws water out of river Kishanganga (more popular as Neelam in Kashmir) near Habba Khatoon pass and stores the water in a 37 m high concrete face rock-fill dam at Gurez before further supplying it to the 330 MW underground powerhouse at village Kralpora. The water is then released into Wular Lake.

Pakistan says this transfer of water has legal as well as ecological consequences. It maintains that India, under the Treaty, can store water but cannot divert it, because India must release as much water downstream as it stores. Union Water Resources Minister, Saif-u-Din Soz, told TSI that the objection has already been addressed and the design has been changed to a run of the river project.

But that is not the only objection Pakistan has. In its normal course, Neelam meets Jhelum near Dumail after meandering into PoK near Gurez, where it acts as the de facto line of control for a few kilometres. Pakistan maintains that the inter-tributary transfer, as envisaged in Kishanganga project design, shall force a crop change in a vast belt in PoK. Pakistan also says that India should stop constructing the powerhouse as substantial investment has already gone into the construction of its 969 MW Neelam-Jhelum power project in PoK, being constructed with the help of a Chinese consortium. Here, Pakistan’s position is again favoured by the Indus Water Treaty, which lays down that if the two countries plan two projects on the same river, the country that has made a substantial investment will be favoured.

Besides these, NHPC’s 2005 design displaced a major portion of Dard Shin tribe by submerging seven of its villages in Gurez valley. To top it all, the NHPC design was not economically viable. Following objections by Pakistan and criticism by environmental groups, India reduced the height of the dam and the quantum of water stored in it, thus minimising the displacement of the community.

But, Pakistan sees a bigger game in India's plans to construct the powerhouse. On November 24 last year, Pakistan's Indus Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah stated that India would make Pakistan a barren land in the next six years. Shah was pointing to the blocking of water by another controversial power project, Baghlihar, whose dam height had made Pakistan approach the World Bank for arbitration.

India, however, is not deterred by any such objections. "We have satisfied ourselves that we are not violating the Treaty. We got a survey done by our experts who went to Pakistan, and through remote sensing. There is no question of loss to agriculture," says Soz.

Both countries now eye the meandering Chenab River. Although, most of the river lies in Pakistan, its headwaters lie in India's portion of Kashmir. The Baghlihar dam has been constructed on the same river and Pakistan is apprehensive that India could use it for strategic purposes besides others. NHPC has identified eight other sites on the river for hydroelectric projects. In constructing Kishanganga, India again has an opportunity to take strategic advantage. Union Minister of State for Power, Jairam Ramesh, during his visit to Kashmir last year said that NHPC will have to work faster on the Kishanganga power project in the wake of Islamabad's efforts to complete Neelam-Jhelum project on the other side of the LoC by 2015. It is not just the urgency in power generation that made the cabinet committee on economic affairs hurriedly approve the upward revised cost of the Kishanganga project at Rs 3,642 crore. Diversion of water towards Wular Lake will mean that the long proposed navigation lock on Wular can be built and water levels raised by several feet. It will also feed the Uri II power project during winter when water levels recede.

Pakistan has long been objecting to the navigation lock terming it as the de facto storage of water from Jhelum and its tributaries. At a time when Pakistan's water availability has decreased to 1,200 cubic metres per person from 5,000 cubic metres in 1947 and is forecast to plunge to 800 cubic metres by 2020, Pakistan may soon approach the International Court of Justice in Hague for resolving the issue.

But India intends to go ahead despite the threat. "Wular is a lake and there is no question of holding water. We want a lock of five feet for winter navigation," Soz told TSI, adding that Pakistan's objections are an "unnecessary exaggeration". "They (Pakistan) are welcome to move the International Court."

Meanwhile, with the Treaty itself becoming a major conflict, Kashmir is emerging as the biggest loser. The result is that in J&K, only 40 per cent of the cultivable land can be irrigated and just 10 per cent of the hydroelectric potential harnessed as ability to store, divert and regulate water have been put out of bounds. To top it all, Kashmir remains a power-starved state despite the fact that NHPC, which earned Rs 2,300 crore in the last fiscal, has half of its assets in J&K where it has three major projects, including Salal that fetches it the cheapest energy.

With the festering Kashmir conflict far from being resolved, water appears to be the next big reason for punch-ups between the nuclear neighbours. And, no wonder that the two countries may one day go to war over water and not territory.

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Laying them to rest

2009-04-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

‘I Treat All Of Them Like My Children’

Zubair A Dar

Chahal (Uri), Apr 2: His is a name that few heard for 67 years of his life. Not many remember it now as well. In his chest, however, lie buried stories of the last rites of hundreds of men, none of whom knew him either.

Ata Muhammad Khan remembers each detail about their burial – faces, injuries, graves and exhumations. The unlettered villager from this hillside hamlet on the right bank of Jhelum even remembers each paper he marked with his thumb before police handed over the bodies to him. All these years, his only companion in pain has been his village graveyard, some 15 kilometers from Varmul on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad Road.

Like the graveyard, Khan too has never complained though the pot of patience is about to overflow. But for the search of a loved one, Khan might have given up the job years back.
“Faces I buried here can never fade from my memory,” says Khan, who took it unto himself to lay the ‘unidentified militants and foreign terrorists,’ as officially labeled, to rest. Away from media glare, when dozens of bodies were transported by troops to his village from across Kashmir - early morning or late night - Khan dug graves, locals joined in for funeral prayers, and the family shared the emotional trauma.

Many rights groups have urged Amnesty International and other bodies to help identify human remains in nearly a thousand unmarked graves discovered by a local human rights group over the past year. The graves were found in 18 villages of north Kashmir.

“Initially, when I accompanied my father to the graveyard and helped him in burying the martyrs, the figures would haunt me in bed,” says his son, Manzoor. “But the most painful part is retrieving the bodies when parents come to know and arrive with orders. Some stories are so painful that we fear recalling them,” adds the senior Khan.

Khan clearly remembers the first time he buried a body. He was busy in his fields that a police man from the village in civvies approached him. “There is a body of a Muslim youth that needs to be buried,” Khan recalls the police constable telling him. By then the Martyrs’ graveyard in nearby Kichama village had been filled with bodies leaving no space for any further burials.

“When I asked why he (Constable) had approached me, he said that no one else in the village had agreed. That was the first time and the succession has not ended till date.”

Since then, Khan says that he buried 235 bodies and exhumed seven of them when parents came back with orders from the district magistrate. Pain of witnessing the mutilations and marks of torture on the bodies has turned him frail. “My eyesight has faded. I have not slept for years. I have grown hard at hearing as well,” says the skeletal villager whose grey hair and wrinkled face tells the story of anguish he has gone through. But he remembers the face of the first body. And all the bodies that arrived successively – some times in numbers as high as nine.

“He was young. A bullet had hit on the right side of his back and then opened its way through the chest,” Khan recalls. “There were marks all over the body. Probably, it had been thrown down some slope to avoid the grind of carrying it on back,” he adds. While Khan has dug hundreds of graves, he calls some of the burials unforgettable. “How can I forget the two bodies that arrived at 11 pm. No one except a neighbour came for my help. He held a gas in hand till I dug two graves. A dozen policemen were watching us,” Khan recalls, leaning forward. “There was no one to offer funeral prayers. So the two were buried without any prayers,” he continues, masking his face by his hands. “One was an aged man who I was told had fought forces for long. Other was a 20 year old. Tears rolled down my eyes when I put his body in the grave. I had cleaned their faces. It appeared as if they were alive, smiling.”

Khan might have given up the volunteering soon afterwards. Several times he fought with police and army over the ill treatment given to the bodies. “I would ask them why they brought bodies in sacks. Why they pushed them down the slopes,” Khan fumes. But for a personal quest.

Khan’s sister had died leaving behind a one and a half year old nephew. “I brought him up till 16. Then his father took him back to his house,” says Khan. “Then one day he came to my house. That was the last time I saw him. Those days many youth would go for arms training. He promised me he would be back by the evening but he never came back since,” Khan reveals. “Even today, I search for him in the bodies that arrive for burial. One day I missed the burial of eight bodies. Then someone told me that my nephew was among them.”

“Allah knows what the truth is. I treat all of them like my children.”

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Lost childhood

2009-04-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

Rebel with a cause

Zubair A. Dar

When this most dreaded boy of central Kashmir was carried home, the shroud enveloping his body was stained red. Nine hours is a long gun battle but he was not killed inside the shrine where he was hiding – anxious troops fired at him indiscriminately even as he lay unconscious, outside the shrine. Mustafa Khan was dead at 19 – five years after he had first picked up a Kalashnikov rifle.

The troops wanted to kill him at all costs. So when the men in olive cordoned off Goigam village, 23 kilometers from Srinagar on July 30 in 2001, they didn’t stop when they found him hiding in a shrine along with two other militants. Ordinarily, the troops avoid an encounter with militants in shrines. They asked him to surrender. He didn’t. And soon, Khan was encircled by hundreds of guns – all of them targeting him.

The village mourned him – not because he was a brave fighter but for the painful tales of his lost childhood. Mustafa Khan’s journey from an innocent child to a deadly militant is a legend in the villages across central Kashmir. It’s a perfect script for a Bollywood blockbuster.

“Mustafa’s uncle was a militant, who had a confrontation with a political worker in the village. Mustafa was caught in that controversy. He was only 13 then,” says Tariq Lone, Mustafa Khan’s childhood friend and classmate. “But Ikhwanis (Counter Insurgents) used to harass him. They came regularly to his house.” (In Kashmir of 1996, several surrendered militants had joined forces with army to fight militants, and came to be known as Ikhwanis.)

Then one day that year, a grenade was hurled on the Ikhwanis – Ama Kana and Muma Kana – in the village. Both survived the attack. Rumours went around that Mustafa was behind the attack. But the Kanas retaliated with might. “They came to our house looking for my son. They found him and I began to plead for mercy. They misbehaved with me, even beat me and pushed me to the ground,” recalls Shameema Begum, Khan’s mother. It was this incident that changed Mustafa’s life entirely. “He hit one of the Ikhwanis with a radio and dared him to touch his mother again,” adds Lone, who believes that the incident had tested the threshold of Mustafa’s tolerance.

Mustafa Khan was arrested in early 1996. He spent the next few months in security forces’ camps. The 13-year-old boy would play his games no more. He was a detainee, ‘dangerous for peace and security of the general public’. “I remember him feeding kittens. He had three of them as pets. He even stitched a dress for a puppy. He said that he felt a chill when he saw the poor puppy getting drenched in the rain,” describes Lone. “In the fields, he would play-act Tipu Khan’s last attempt to flee.” (Tipu, a militant, had been shot dead while trying to escape on horse-back some years ago.) At the camp, however, playing fields were out of bounds. Besides his own torture, Mustafa had to witness cruelties that would always haunt him. “He was made to sponge down the blood-soaked vehicle in which Shakeel was tortured to death,” Shakeel’s brother, Ghulam Ahmad Bhat, remembers Mustafa telling him. Shakeel, Mustafa’s childhood friend, had joined militant ranks and was eventually arrested from Badran village while Mustafa was in the Barzulla army camp near his village. “Three days after his arrest, we recovered Shakeel’s body from the fields. It was April 4 in 1996. Whenever I met Khan, he would talk about the incident,” says Bhat.

Mustafa Khan was finally released from the 34 Rashtriya Rifles camp in Beerwah town of central Kashmir, some 17 kilometers from his village. He had been transferred there from Barzulla camp. “But the Ikhwanis asked him to report to them at the camp every month and bring his mother along when he came on August 1 that year,” says Khan’s father, Abdul Razak Khan, a shawl trader in those days. “At home, I advised my son not to indulge in any suspicious activity. He would not speak a word, except asking ‘why should my mother go to the army camp?’”

Three days before the August 1 meeting, Khan left his house in the morning and did not return. He was, instead, trekking the high altitude along the LoC to reach the other side for weapons training. He had joined the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He returned some months later, planned attack after attack on army camps across central Kashmir with Ikhwanis as his prime target. People believe that a suicide bombing on the 34 RR camp at Beerwah – Ikhwanis camped there – had been planned by the teenager.

As a silent appreciation of Mustafa’s fight against the counter insurgents, thousands attended his funeral after he was killed in the gun-battle. He didn’t kill Ama Kana – the counter insurgent was killed days before Khan returned from Pakistan. But his resolve to fight other counter insurgents remained alive. “Mustafa Khan told me that he’d made it a point to give the counter insurgents a tough time,” says Bhat.

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Fighting impunity

2009-03-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

Masooda Parveen does not seek compensation. She seeks justice. The 44-year-old widow is fighting a lone battle to punish the perpetrators of her husband’s ‘murder’.

Zubair A. Dar

High power spectacle lenses cover her scrawny face almost fully. Behind the glasses, the eyes appear diminutive. A narrow and long black cloth wraps her head twice over. In her firan, she appears a small girl trying her elder sister’s clothes. But the frame does not depict her resolve. Deep inside, Masooda Parveen possesses the heart of a lioness.

Masooda Parveen is fighting to set precedence. Like many women in Kashmir, her husband was killed in ‘custody’. She fought to punish the perpetrators for ten long years. But the apex court of India turned down her arguments and the supporting documents. As if her sufferings strengthen her resolve, Masooda Parveen wants to take her case to an international court.

“I will take my case to Geneva,” she says, quenching her fists. “It will be a reference there. May be it helps people like me to get justice,” she says. As she speaks of her husband Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din Regoo, an advocate and a saffron trader, tears swell in her eyes. Regoo was detained from his home in Chandhara village near Pampore in Pulwama district on the chilly evening of February 1 in 1998. He never returned. His body did.

“He was almost six feet tall. When they brought his body home, he has been reduced to this much,” says Masooda Parveen, gesturing with her hands a couple of feet apart. Masooda recalls the sequence of events of that evening. “We had invited his sisters for a dinner two days after Eid. In the evening, as we sat talking, two Ikhwanis, Khaliq and Bashir, entered our house. Major Punia of 17 Jat of the Army and some other military men were also with them.” She vividly remembers every detail. “They came with their faces covered but I pulled off their masks.”

“They first tortured my husband in a room of our ancestral house,” Parveen recalls. “As they began to leave, I rushed to prevent them from taking my husband along but they pushed me away.” Masooda says she kept begging for help over the next two days. She says that she wondered bare feet from the army camp to police station to MLAs house. “People took me for a lunatic,” she says.

Two days after his arrest, Regoo’s body was brought home.

Army claimed that Regoo was a militant and was killed when he accidentally triggered off an explosive in a hideout where according to them he had stored it. Masooda says that her husband was framed. “He was killed with an axe. They had slashed his shoulder and then placed his body on an explosive.”

Masooda protested. She even boldly told police officials that she would identify the men who had come for her husband. To pacify her, political leaders and police officials promised her compensation. Within weeks, however, she was denied audience. “As if the wails didn’t reach his ears,” she says.

With the responsibility of bringing up two boys, Masooda Parveen was looking the storm in the eye by planning to take her fight to the Supreme Court. But the pain was refusing to go and options were limited. “Lawyers in Srinagar were discouraging me, telling me to give up,” she says. “The Ikhwanis had robbed us of property, I ignored. But then they killed my husband. I decided to fight,” says the resolute widow.

Masooda thus decided to file a petition and wrote letter after letter to the Supreme Court. None would be answered till one day the apex court entertained one of her applications.

On May 2, 2007 the Division Bench of the Supreme Court of India dismissed her petition saying, “We have the army and police record pertaining to the incident which clearly show that Regoo was indeed a militant. We thus find no merit in the petition.”

Masooda was dismayed. Despite the fact that Army’s version showed February 2 as the date of arrest and the police record put it as February 1, her petition could not persuade the judges. She filed a review petition, only to be dismissed by the Apex court.

But she has not lost hope. She says she would continue her battle till justice was done. Living in rented house in Pampore, Masooda says every evening when she looks back, her own story horrifies her. “But at the same time I want to continue my fight for larger interest.” She says.

The Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), a civil liberties organization based in Delhi, published a report analyzing the judgment. “In the teeth of an admission that the death took place in Army custody, numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in the state version of events that led up to the death, compounded by the “loss” of the original file containing the inquest report and documents, the Supreme Court chose to believe the assertion of the state that the deceased was a militant and his death was accidental,” the report observed.

The report has not been able to get justice for Massoda, but her fight goes on.