A Tragedy called Kunanposhpora – a village famous for an infamous incident.
Children walk towards their home in Kunanposhpora
On the night of 23rd February 1991, the life of women in the remote village of Kunanposhpora in Kupwara district of Indian Administered Kashmir changed forever. In one night the women of this village lost everything they had including their chastity and integrity and got attached to the words pain, misery and tragedy forever.
More than twenty years have passed since the women of this village saw the worst face of Indian army who are supposed to be the guardians and protectors of their homeland. At least 53 women were gang raped by Indian soldiers that night. However, Human Rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have reported that the number of raped women could be as high as 100.
Approximately at 11 p.m. the soldiers of 4-Rajputana Rifles cordoned off the village to conduct a search operation. The men were taken out from their houses and made to assemble in an open field for interrogation overnight. Once the men were taken away, the army men barged into the houses and gang raped women of all ages ranging from 13 to 80.
The incident was reported by villagers to military authorities who not only refused to take any action but even denied the charges saying no such thing had happened at all. This proved that the lives of Kashmiri women had been exposed to all kind of trials and tribulation. Several inquires were launched into the Kunanposhpora incident, and if one looks at the history of these inquiries he finds that most of the committees found the truth but all the issue has been put in the cold storage since its occurrence.
On 7th April 1991, the New York Times reported the Kunanposhpora rape incident under the headline, “India Moves Against Kashmir Rebels.” According to the report, on 5th March, 1991 the villagers complained to then Kupwara district magistrate S.M. Yasin, who visited the village on 7th March to investigate the incident.
In his final report, he stated that the troopers “behaved like wild beasts” and described the attack in these words, “A large number of armed personnel entered into the houses of villagers and at gunpoint they gang-raped women, without any consideration of their age, marital status or pregnancy. There was a hue and cry in the whole village.” He went on to say, “I found the villagers were harassed to the extreme possible extent. I feel ashamed to put in black and white what kind of atrocities and their magnitude was brought to my notice on the spot.”
He identified them as members of 4th Rajputana Rifles and said they rampaged through the village from 11pm on 23rd February until 9 am the next morning. Following the district magistrate’s report, increased publicity about the incident led to strong denials from Indian military officials.
On March 17, Mufti Baha-ud-Din Farooqi, Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, led a fact-finding mission to Kunanposhpora. Over the course of his investigation, he interviewed fifty-three women, who claimed to have been raped by the soldiers, and tried to determine why a police investigation into the incident had never taken place. According to his report, villagers claimed that a police investigation into the event had never commenced because the officer assigned to the case, Assistant Superintendent Dilbaugh Singh, was on leave. Farooqi later stated that in his 43 years on the bench he “had never seen a case in which normal investigative procedures were ignored as they were in this one.”Just a few months later, in July, 1991, Dilbaugh Singh was transferred to another station without ever having started the investigation.
In response to criticism of the Indian government’s handling of the investigation, the army requested the Press Council of India to investigate the incident. The investigative team visited Kunanposhpora in June, more than three months after the incident. The team interviewed hospital officials who stated that one of the women who had been pregnant at the time of the assault had given birth to a child with a fractured arm just 4 days after the incident. She claimed that she had been kicked during the rapes; a pediatrician, who visited the village as part of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Basic Rights Committee, confirmed her story.
The Press Council team claimed that the fetus had been injured during delivery. Medical examinations conducted on 32 of the women between March 15 and 21, nearly one month after the incident, confirmed that the women had wounds on their chests and abdomens, and that the hymens of three of the unmarried women had been torn. The team claimed “such a delayed medical examination proves nothing”.
The Press Council’s dismissal of facts about the Kunanposhpora, and the manner in which it carried out its investigation was widely criticized.
Asia Watch in its 1991 report stated, “The alacrity with which military and government authorities in Kashmir discredited the allegations of rape and their failure to follow through with procedures that would provide critical evidence for any prosecution in particular prompt medical examinations of the rape victims raise serious concerns about the integrity of the investigation. Given evidence of a possible cover-up, both the official and the Press Council investigation fall far short of the measures necessary to establish the facts in the incident and determine culpability.”
Even the US Department of State, in its 1992 report on international human rights, rejected the Indian government’s conclusion, saying there “was credible evidence to support charges that an elite army unit engaged in mass rape in the Kashmiri village of Kunanposhpora.”
Nobody can feel the pain of the victims of this village. What they went through that night and what they have been going through since the last twenty years is beyond anything that can be expressed in words. The women lost their honor, their dignity, their chastity, on one hand and at the same time got subjected to societal disdain.
The incident that is written as the night of oppression and brutality may also be inked as a night when terror leashing armed men snatched everything from this small hamlet as the God turned his head away.
More than two decades have passed and people who committed such heinous crimes are still roaming freely as they are protected by the leaders of what they call as the world’s largest democracy. Many victims have died waiting for justice to be delivered. They are just given promises that their case will be reopened. Journalists and film makers have documented their details and won applauds for themselves but nothing and nobody has been able to ensure justice for them.
These people are still living in hope that someday justice will be done although even if the people involved are punished, these women have nothing to gain now. They have lost much more than anyone can imagine. Nobody can restore their honor and their chastity to them, nobody can wash away the stains from their hemline, nothing can give them back the good old days of living in simplicity with their near and dear ones and no one can take away the stigmas they have faced in the last twenty years.
Picture Courtesy: www.aljazeera.com
