Writing this column against the backdrop of last week’s brutal killing of three civilians and grievous injuries to five civilians in the Poonch district (J&K) by the armed forces.
Several years ago, I first heard of a series of encounter killings taking place in the Kashmir Valley. As I went through the news reports of those killings, as reported in the national dailies and even in the local newspapers, I sat shocked and shaken. Among those killed by the State were even the mentally challenged, together with young schoolboys and even those pursuing mundane professions.
In my book titled ‘Kashmir – The Unending Tragedy: Reports from the Front Lines’ (Published by Amaryllis in 2019), I have focused on those news reports that relay the extent of the havoc that has been ongoing for several years – killing of civilians and the apolitical young in the Kashmir Valley, in custody, or in those fake encounters.
While these mindless killings were taking place, shrilly political speeches were ongoing in the backdrop, together with assurances from the establishment… Though there are several such cases, in this particular book, I have focused on those which took place over a decade ago. You may ask why? Because the more recent ones have somewhat been highlighted, whereas the killings which took place several years ago have been seemingly pushed into the interiors of government files. If those files exist at all!
One of the most blatantly gruesome killings took place around February 2006 when the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was holding a meeting in New Delhi with senior leaders of the J&K State. Four young boys, including a nine-year-old, were killed by security forces in the Dodhipora village in the Handwara sector.
As The Times Of India reported (February 24, 2006), ‘The killing of four youths during a search operation by Rashtriya Rifles has come as a big blow to the then Army Chief General JJ Singh’s much-touted policy of avoiding collateral damage in counter-insurgency operations.’
Those killings had gone to show the sheer hollowness of the so-called assurances that the then Army Chief, JJ Singh, had come up with soon after his appointment – words along the strain that there’d be fewer human rights violations.
About six months before these killings, there were similar reports. In July 2005, three young boys were killed on the spot when an ambush party of the Rashtriya Rifles opened fire at the Baragund Village in the Kupwara district of North Kashmir.
The Indian Express dated July 26, 2005, carried this news story – ‘School kids lead protests as Kupwara village mourns… a day after this shocked village buried three of its children – shot dead by the army, in the shade of the walnut trees, the anger finally broke through. Thousands of children in uniform marched the streets across Kupwara, chanting separatist slogans and demanding immediate action against the army.’
The army later issued an apology, stating the killing of these boys was because of mistaken identity, and there was this report (The Hindu dated July 27, 2005) in which Lt General Dhillon, General Officer Commanding of the Srinagar based 15 Corps said, “People’s anger against the army is justified. We have earlier said and I repeat it is very unfortunate and regrettable.” Dhillon was also quoted as saying that the Army was now planning ‘refined operations.’
Together with the killings of the civilians, the trend of fake encounters took off several years ago. One of the biggest embarrassments faced by the Army in the Valley had been reports of fake encounters and fake killings and fake surrenders… Most of us had not heard the very term ‘fake surrenders’ until about 2004 when news reports of ‘fake surrender’ surged in December 2004.
It was Mir Ehsan’s report in The Indian Express dated December 2, 2004, which held out that ‘of the forty-seven who surrendered in J&K, twenty-seven were not militants. It also quoted the DGP Gopal Sharma as saying they were not militants. “They were not genuine militants. They were not eligible for surrender.”
Other newspapers also commented on this. To quote from the Hindustan Times report, “The largest-ever surrender ceremony of the year has turned into the Army’s biggest source of embarrassment. In a statement, the Army admitted that “it was duped by a civilian source in the surrender of forty-seven ‘terrorists’ at the 16 Corps headquarters in Nagrota on November 9 and the source is now absconding.”
And in the spring of 2017, a shocker came up on the television screens – a young Kashmiri, Farooq Ahmad Dar, was seen tied to a military jeep, driven in that very condition the entire day, for twenty-eight kilometers, across the rural stretches of the Kashmir Valley.
But twenty-six-year-old Farooq Ahmad Dar isn’t a terrorist. Nor a stone-pelter or a word-pelter! On the contrary, he is what can be termed a ‘good citizen’. That very morning, he was seen queuing up outside the polling booth at Arizal’s Chill Bras area to cast his vote for the Lok Sabha by-polls for the Srinagar constituency.
After casting his vote, he took off on his motorcycle, to his sister’s home as there had been a death in the family. And it’s then, while he was driving his motorcycle, he was not just stopped by the Army but pulled off from his bike and tied to their jeep. He kept telling the Army personnel led by Major Leetul Gogoi that he wasn’t a ‘terrorist’.
A shawl artisan, he had just voted at booth number 90 of the Chill village and even showed the indelible ink mark on his finger. But nothing could stop the brutality unleashed on him. With his phiran in tatters and bruises on his body, he was finally let off from the Rashtriya Rifles camp after the village elders pleaded for his release.
And to compound the tragedy, Major Leetul Gogoi was given a commendation certificate! Critics questioned the very timing. What was the hurry to award Major Leetul Gogoi with a commendation certificate when an FIR had been lodged against him, an investigation was underway to investigate whether what he did on that April 9 morning was justifiable or even ethical – after all, what Major Gogoi did was something so terribly horrifying, tying a hapless civilian to a military jeep, using him as a human shield, dragging him for kilometers before dumping him.
An emotionally and physically bruised Dar could barely cry out. ‘Am I an animal to be tied to a jeep and dragged on … that day has changed my life! Major Gogoi is lying by saying I was pelting stones. If I was pelting stones, I wouldn’t have gone to cast my vote! Why hasn’t the police or the Army recorded my statement? The least they could have done was to hear what I have to say.’
Human tragedies are ongoing. Perhaps, the crux lies in what I was told years back, by the former Chief Justice of J&K, Justice Mufti Bahauddin Farooqi. In an interview given to me in Srinagar in the early 90s, he’d said: “The government is treating each person as a suspect. I would say there are no more than 100 militants, yet to locate them a city’s entire population is hounded. The searches are done in the most brutal way … even women in labour are not allowed to move …”
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