New Delhi: For many in Kashmir, the latest video clip showing three civilians who were killed in the aftermath of the Poonch militant attack has brought back grim memories of the 2020 Shopian “encounter” and other “fake encounters” in which alleged civilians were killed.
“The moment I saw the video, I felt my stomach churning. I could see my own son Imtiyaz’s dead body in front of me,” Sabit Hussain, father of Imtiyaz Ahmed, told The Wire. Ahmed was killed along with two others during an alleged staged gun battle, involving army personnel, in southern Kashmir’s Shopian district in July 2020.
The video in question shows unidentified soldiers from 48 Rashtriya Rifles torturing some men, who were allegedly civilians from Jammu’s Poonch district. Three men who appeared in the video before they returned home as dead bodies were identified by their respective family members upon seeing the video. The deceased men were called to an army camp in Poonch’s Topa Peer village allegedly for questioning.
Like Hussian, who lost his son in the 2020 ‘encounter’, several others who saw the video and heard the news of alleged custodial killings by the army personnel in Poonch have not been able to eat or sleep at all.
Photographs of the three young labourers from Rajouri who were killed in a fake encounter in Amshipora on July 18, 2020. Photo: Article 14 (https://article-14.com/post/the-anatomy-of-an-extrajudicial-killing-in-kashmir)
‘Don’t expect justice’
In April this year, Mukhtar Hussain Shah, a resident of Nar village in Jammu’s Mendhar tehsil, allegedly consumed poison at his house. He was admitted to the Government Medical College, Rajouri, where he died soon after. Local police claimed that Shah took the extreme step after being asked to report for questioning in connection with the April 20 ambush by terrorists in Bhata Dhurian forest that left five soldiers dead.
However, his family still doesn’t buy into the official version, presented by the hospital, that he consumed poison to kill himself. According to Mukhtar’s brother, Rafaqat Hussain Shah, he was tortured to death to “cover up the army’s wrongdoing”. Rafaqat says he found torture marks and blackened wounds on Mukhtar’s back and thighs, which his brother says is evidence to support his claim that Mukhtar was tortured in custody.
Rafaqat says that to date there has been no progress in his brother’s case. “My brother never consumed any poison. We were told over the phone that he was lying unconscious on the road and was taken to a hospital. They still haven’t caught anyone responsible for the wounds on my dead brother’s body,” adds Rafaqat.
It was only around the time that the case was fresh that the family was assured justice and action, says Rafaqat.
The family also sought a judicial probe into the death of Mukhtar, while also alleging that the order of the magisterial inquiry reads more like “an attempt to cover up the truth”.
“The incident in Poonch reminded me of what my brother saw. These deaths are of the same pattern. In our case, they were hellbent to pass off my brother’s death as suicide,” Rafaqat told The Wire.
‘We feel betrayed’
“It has been four years since they killed our children, but these recent killings triggered our pain again,” said Mohammad Yusuf, father of 24-year-old Ibrar, who was killed alongside Imtiyaz Ahmed.
“When I heard the news about the custodial killings in Poonch, I could only think of how the remaining families would feel as dead as I did when they killed my Ibrar,” Yusuf told The Wire.
Yusuf also remarked that being a part of a community that lived in the border districts, they have had loved ones laying down their lives to protect the country from terrorism, sometimes for the army and other times with the army. “If such incidents continue to happen, the love that the community has will start turning into hate,” he said.
“If a Muslim from Pakistan illegally enters our border, we never treat them as Muslim, we deal with them as outsiders trying to mess with the peace of our beloved country. This is what we get? They murdered our children with their own hands, these boys killed in Poonch were treated worse than animals,” Yusuf added.
While the pain of losing their loved one is unbearable to live with, they say that the recent decision to suspend the life sentence of an Army captain who was found guilty of killing the three men has also shaken their faith in getting justice as a minority community in the country.
Adding to the same is Sabir Hussain, father of Imtiyaz Ahmed, who views the situation from the lens of a grieving parent. Hussain stands by the fact that his son and the other two killed are victims of a “fake encounter”.
“He killed our sons and yet there is no justice for us. Nobody is with us because we come from impoverished backgrounds. He should have been hanged but he is roaming free. We feel cheated,” Hussain complained.
Looking at the Poonch killings, Hussain said, “Once someone dies, the administration comes offering compensation and jobs, but these families should not believe them, because even this compensation is a test in itself.”
Hussain speaks of getting compensation as a “cycle of harassment” since he claims that while the administration had offered Rs 5 lakh cash compensation to the victims’ families after the army’s claim of an encounter was busted by the J&K Police – this compensation money was used up over the last two years in visiting the government offices and pursuing the case for government jobs.
