Kashmir Watch, Nov 8
By Salih Peerzada
The tranquility was shattered with the thudding sound, produced when the sod came in touch with the hard sole of the running boots and inside the boots lay the feet of the young and energetic warmongers. The clock unwillingly dragged its hands to 11’o clock through the drab winter night. None in the village would have ever imagined that such a night would fall which would never see a morning. It was intervening night of 22nd and 23rd February, 1991 which was to hand the dreaded Kalashnikovs in the young hands of 30 odd boys of this village. Revenge, revenge and revenge was the only thing in their minds. The snowflakes showering down were about to witness one of the most nefarious inhumane acts ever. The evil objective clearly set in the mind, these men-in-uniform (from 04 Rajputana Raffles of 68 Brigade C/o 56 APO) tried to burry it under the bogus portrayal of “search operation” and made their way into this tiny village of Kunan-Poshpora just 5 kms from the main township of Kupwara. All the men folk were cornered; they kept them aloof from the rest of the village and subjected them to torture, leaving only women and children in their houses. Little did Lass ded,a frail old lady of 70, know that such an ill fate would meet her. Even if it had been the worst of all the nightmares, it would have given itself a second thought before coming to her. She was busy offering her prayers, completely ignorant of what God had in account for her. An ear piercing sound distracted the old lass ded from her connection with God, it came as one of the window panes of her house came crashing in and scattered itself in the room, exposing the butt of the gun through the broken window. Behind the gun was the barely visible face of the beasts in uniform. They managed to open the window through the broken window pane leaving the lady, older than their mothers, traumatized. As she saw them breaking in, the only thing she could do was wait and watch. Praying it to be a dream she looked helplessly at them. They broke the door open, cracking the jamb and entered in. Same happened in the other houses as well; they entered as if to conduct the usual search operations. But they had something else in mind. “At 11pm, I as usual was busy offering special prayers (naffel)” said lasse ded, ”and at least four troopers broke down the window and entered into the room in candle light. As my son, who is serving in the Police Department, was rendering his duties in Uri, Baramulla, I was all alone.” They entered one after the other dressed up in complete uniform ready to execute the prefabricated plan. She started receding back as she saw them approaching towards her. The conscience of these so called soldiers, not allowing them not to do it, was rebuffed by them. They caught hold of her and what followed was one could have never imagined. “ The troopers tore my cloths as I cried, but all in vain. They raped me one by one for hours. I cried but they put cloth into my mouth to cease my cries. After hours of trauma, I became unconscious.” None except the children were spared. Not one not two but upto 30 women were raped irrespective of their condition whether age, pregnancy or health. The villagers allegation count upto 100, but that doesn’t make a difference to me, as the holy Quran says “if you kill one human being its like you have killed the entire humanity.” The chastity of the women was incinerated in public. Some of them were raped in presence of the children and family members. They carried out the pogrom from 11 in the night till 9 in the morning, leaving the village burnt without fire. The aftermath had even worse to bring, it was tantamount to salt-to-injures. All the raped women suffered psychometric disorders and two pregnant women who were raped were ultimately divorced and many remained unmarried as nobody wanted to marry them. After 11 days an F.I.R was lodged (No.R-1/1387/88 under RPC 376-452-342 dated 07-03-1991) at the Trehgam police station. However, no action was initiated against the culprits behind this heinous act. They only suffered official apathy. Finally the complaint was filed with S.M. Yasin, the District Magistrate of kupwara. The only thing he could do was to present a report,” the soldiers behaved like wild beasts" and described the attack as follows:
“A large number of armed personnel entered into the houses of villagers and at gunpoint they gang-raped 23 ladies, without any consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy etc, there was a hue and cry in the whole village.”
He went on to state:
“I found the villagers were harassed to the extreme possible extent. In the morning after 9 a.m. when the Army left, the village men folk were released and when they entered their houses, they were shocked to see that the Army forces have gang raped their daughters, wives, sisters, etc. The armed forces have forcibly taken No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the locals as well as from the local police after doing the illegal action. I feel ashamed to put in black and white what kind of atrocities and their magnitude was brought to my notice on the spot.”
Many more investigations followed, like by Mufti Baha-ud-din’s (Chief justice of Jammu & Kashmir High Court), Divisional Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah’s, but all in vain. The Indian officials termed the incident as “baseless”.
The United States Department of States in its 1992 report on international human rights, rejected the Indian government's conclusion, and determined that there was "was credible evidence to support charges that an elite army unit engaged in mass rape in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora.”
Outraged over the government's handling of the situation, divisional commissioner Wajahat Habibullah immediately resigned, and asked for early retirement from the Indian Administrative Service. The Indian authorities dismissed all of the allegations of mass rape as groundless. No further investigations were conducted.
Justice delayed accounts to justice denied. Almost 19 years have passed since then and the wounds are fresh as before. The 30 youth who had crossed over to other side of Kashmir were eventually killed, hardly anyone of them is alive. Time passed by, there were protest, shutdowns but time killed them all.
No one except who is affected cares. We shouldn’t get affected, that’s all we want, who cares about others? But we never know if same kind of fate might catch us and then we will helplessly look for help. But same will happen to us as no one cares. Even don’t you. After reading all this you conscience might wake up but it is going to die as soon as you finish reading or might survive for little while but eventually it will die because we don’t care. So your reading was nothing else than a time-pass. That’s why I had advised you in the beginning that “PLEASE DON’T READ.”
Author ca be reached at: salihpeerzada@gmail.com
Posted on 08 Nov 2009 by
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