WHEN SAVIOR TURNED DEVIL

WHEN SAVIOR TURNED DEVIL

The Kunan-Poshpura villages came into the news and in February 1991 when some soldiers were reportedly killed in a militant ambush. The village before that had never had a problem with the military but single baseless suspect of few military personals put an indelible blot on the glorious pages of the history of Indian Armed forces for the posterity to condemn.  Everything changed in the intervening night of February 23- 24, 1991. An unspecified number of soldiers of the 4th Rajputana Rifles mustered the entire village in the name of conducting a “search operation”. All the men were asked to come out of their homes, and were taken away to another location for interrogation. Once the men were taken away, soldiers went inside every house, ruthlessly raped and abused women through the night. The victims of this mass rape ranged in age from 13 to 80 years. Their numbers remained a matter of conjecture as only 53 or more married women filed FIRs or police complaints and got themselves medically examined. The unmarried girls, also said to number more than 40, did not. It was much too shameful for them and would seriously impact on their future.

The men, young and old, were tortured to make them disclose the whereabouts of the militants involved in the ambush against the army. Third degree torture included the infamous “roller treatment” on their body and limbs, which has left some of them permanently afflicted, and electric shocks on their scalp and genitals. No report was filed for the initial two days by the traumatized villagers out of fear, and stigma.

District Magistrate, S.M Yasin, visited the village two days after the incident to investigate. According to his report, “the armed forces behaved like violent beasts.” He identified the soldiers as members of 4th Rajputana Rifles and said they rampaged through the village from 11:00 pm on February 23 until 9:00 am the next morning.

On March 17, a fact-finding delegation headed by Chief Justice Mufti Bahauddin Farooqi interviewed fifty-three women who had made allegations of rape and tried to determine why a police investigation into the incident had never taken place. Farooqi reportedly stated that he "had never seen a case in which normal investigative procedures were ignored as they were in this one." The then Divisional Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah led a team comprising of a colonel from Army HQ, a commandant of the Border Security Force, the Deputy Commissioner of Kupwara district and the Superintendent of Police,Kupwara. After recording statements from 41 women, he concluded that there was sufficient cause for a more detailed enquiry and suggested as much in his report to the Governor. However his recommendations were deleted in the report published by the state government.

On April 7, 1991; the New York Times reported the Kunan-Poshpora rape incident under the headline, “India Moves against Kashmir Rebels.” After much furore in the press the army initiated an investigation led by a Press Council of India committee led by BG Verghese and K Vikram Rao had visited Valley after the incident and gave a “clean chit to the soldiers”.

A police investigation ordered into the incident was never carried out because the Assistant Superintendent Dilbaugh Singh assigned to the case was transferred before he could start. Fifteen or more of the women had to undergo hysterectomies following complications because of infection after the sexual violence on them.

Government tried to hide its shame in all possible way even money was distributed to the victims by government official mere recently, not by cheque or to their bank accounts, but by cash. They were told it was for medical expenses. This was done apparently so that the government did not have to acknowledge that mass gang rapes had taken place.

20 years after the incident In October 2011, the State Human Rights Commission gave directions for reopening the case after hearing pleas from the victims from the village. A PIL was also filed seeking reopening of the case. The Jammu and Kashmir High Court recently disposed of the petition as a lower court was considering another application, but gave leave to the victims to approach the High Court again if they wished later. On June 18, 2013, the Judicial Magistrate Kupwara J. A. eelani, while dismissing the conclusions made by the police in the recently filed closure report in the case of Kunan Poshpura mass rape of February23-24, 1991 returned the case file to the police, asking for “further investigation to unravel the identity of those who happen to be perpetrators”.

A section of the media, taking a cue from the security forces and the state government, has for two decades sought to project the Kunan Poshpursa crime as a conspiracy by militant groups to stigmatize the Indian armed forces. The state government, despite many of its officials and judge calling for further investigations, has remained in a state of denial over the years, with successive political parties in power ignoring the pleas of the people. No Chief Minister has ever visited the twin villages.

The psychological trauma is even more than the physical one. Almost every woman in the village still carries emotional scars and psychological stress which even time find impossible to heal. While some of the women are now in their Sixties, many of them are still not 40, and have many years ahead of them. They need to be healed in body and mind and the only way is by prosecuting those devils who not only committed a heinous crime against humanity but also created an indelible blot in the glorious past of Indian armed forces. The women face an additional and aggravated social crisis. While there is no information of post-1991 incidence of divorce of such women by their husbands, their narratives hint at considerable tension within the families, and in their society. There is evidence of them being ostracized. For the young women, the situation is far grimmer. The unmarried rape victim was quietly married off to relatives or in distant villages as no one was willing to wed them in the area. The two villages continue to suffer this ostracisation and the stigma. Even Young men repeatedly report of how they had to change schools and colleges because they were taunted by teachers, classmates and others as coming from “that village where your mothers and sisters were raped by the soldiers.” Even today, such taunts have forced many young men and women
to give up their studies entirely, while a few brave ones now study in institutions far away.

There is hardly any employment for the youth, other than as labour or working in their family farms. The village seems to have been ignored by government. There is little to show by way of development. A room with a board of a health centre remains closed, with no medical personnel coming to work in the village. Other than the cash once distributed almost clandestinely by a State Minister, people say there has been no government compensation paid either to the women victims of gang rape, or the men who were tortured. Almost 24 years have passed since this barbaric incident but innocent people of the valley still await justice. There is a strong need to protest against such barbaric attack on humanity on the words of Martin Luther in his famous speech on 28 Aug. 1983 “we’re not satisfied and we’ll not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like mighty stream.”