Kashmir: Bodies of Three Rajouri Youth Killed in 'Encounter' Exhumed
Gantamulla, Baramulla: The inhabitants of this sleepy hamlet in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district were fast asleep in the early hours of Saturday. Breaking the tranquility of the morning, men with shovels went downhill to exhume the three young men, including a minor, who were killed in an "encounter" which the Army admitted the 'Dos and Don’ts of Chief of Army Staff' as approved by the Supreme Court were contravened.
This village on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road is heavily militarised with a large presence of police, Army and paramilitary Central Reserve of Police Forces. It is here that the graves of more than 200 militants – both identified and unidentified – lie. Amongst them are the graves of the three Rajouri youth who had come to Shopian to earn their livelihood.
On the intervening night of July 17 and 18, the trio was killed by the Army’s 62 Rashtriya Rifles at Amshipora, Shopian and they were dubbed as unidentified militants. They were buried in this graveyard, which is more than 240 kilometres away from their native places.
After the families of the youth were unable to contact them for 22 days, they lodged a missing persons report with the police in Rajouri. They claimed that the three persons killed in Amshipora were their children. The separate probes ordered by the Army and the Police, as well as DNA tests, confirmed that the trio was indeed the youth from Rajouri.
Photographs of the three young labourers from Rajouri who went missing in Shopian last month. Photo: Twitter
At 5:30 am on Saturday, the quiet of the graveyard was broken by the sound of shovels digging into the earth. This exhumation of the bodies of Abrar (16), Imtiyaz (22) and Ibrar (25) was the result of an agonising struggle of these families to receive the bodies of their loved ones.
As the bodies were exhumed, the distraught parents and relatives of the slain youth could not muster the courage to look at them. “They identified their children from the photographs clicked by the gravedigger at the time of their burial on July 18,” says Choudhary Guftar, a social activist from Rajouri, who witnessed the exhumation here.
"From the photographs of bodies, I could see Imtiyaz’s face was burnt beyond recognition. Abrar's chest was riddled with bullets. The face of Ibrar was also partially disfigured,” he says.
The exhumation of the bodies took around one hour. The graveyard was out of bounds for media and a large number of police and CRPF men were deployed on the 200 metre stretch of the road near it. Traffic movement was also halted for 5-10 minutes when the bodies were being brought from the graveyard to shift them in an ambulance, which would ferry them to Rajouri. There, the slain youth would receive a respectful burial near their native houses.
The graveyard was cordoned off as the bodies of the three Rajouri youth were being exhumed. Photo: Umer Maqbool
The identification of the graves was not a difficult task as the local police and the gravedigger knew exactly where the trio was buried.
Recalling the day when the bodies were brought for burial, Abdul Majid, the gravedigger, told The Wire that he got a call from the police in the afternoon to dig three to four graves. “Later in the day, the bodies were brought here and we completed the burial process in the evening,” he said.
The gravedigger’s account of the state of bodies when they were exhumed is perhaps a testament to their innocence. “The bodies were fresh and had not decomposed and were also odourless,” he claims.
This is a rarity as per the experience of the gravedigger. “After the exhumation, I draped them in fresh shrouds as they will be buried in their native places now,” he says.
Majid, who owns a tea stall here, has buried more than 200 bullet-riddled bodies since 2014 “It is the first time that bodies have been exhumed,” he says.
Before April this year, the bodies of only foreign and unidentified militants were buried in the graveyard. But since then, the bodies of local identified militants are also being laid to rest here by the authorities, citing the outbreak of COVID-19.
Families demand justice
Muhammad Yosouf, the father of Ibrar, who could not gather the courage to see the body of his son and the two other relatives, said the cruel men who killed their children should be hanged. “What was the crime and fault of our children? Why were they killed? They [the perpetrators] should be hanged so that nobody dares to snatch a son away from a father,” he says.
“Did our children harm anybody? We are poor and helpless people, but we will sell our everything to ensure that the killers of our children are brought to justice.”
Talking to The Wire, deputy commissioner (Baramulla) G.N. Itoo said the exhumation process was carried out in accordance with the legal formalities. "The entire process was completed in a peaceful manner," he says.
The exhumation took place days after the J&K Police announced that they will hand the bodies over to the families of the slain youth.
As already reported by The Wire, two persons have been arrested by Jammu & Kashmir Police in connection with the killings. The two men are believed to have played a role in the pre-execution stage of the encounter.
One of them lives in the vicinity of the 62 RR camp and the accommodation rented by the labourers before they were killed in Amshipora.
The Army has already admitted on September 18 that that “during the operation, powers vested under the AFSPA 1990 were exceeded”.
It also said in a statement that “the Dos and Don’ts of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) as approved by the Hon’ble Supreme Court have been contravened” in the course of the operation.
This article went live on October third, two thousand twenty, at twenty minutes past one in the afternoon.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
