Partisan Justice

The much-awaited verdict of Supreme Court on Pathribal fake encounter case changed the shape of many other cases involving Indian Army and might affect many others in the future. The latest development in the 12 years old case of abduction and murder came when the army said they will go for prosecution in a military court (Court Martial) rather than trial in a civil or criminal court. The fate of five other cases involving army officials hanged in balance till the Supreme Court verdict allowed the army to choose how it would like to try the accused army officials in the Pathribal case.

“There are five more cases in which trail was stopped due to the stay order of Supreme Court but now as the final judgment has come those five cases will also get started again” says Bari Andrabi, Chief Public Prosecutor.

The Supreme Court decision on Pathribal case became an important precedent for other similar cases involving army personnel in human rights violations. It has already has an immediate and direct effect on the Machil fake encounter case in which three youths, Shehzad Ahmad, Riyaz Ahmad and Mohammad Shafi were killed in staged encounter and later branded as foreign militants by 4 RR personnel (Rajput Rifles) on April 30, 2010. They were allegedly lured to Line of Control by an SPO on the pretext of getting them jobs with the army.

The accused army personnel challenged the orders of Sessions Court Baramulla and Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Sopore. The two subordinate courts held that civil courts have the jurisdiction to proceed against the accused army men in the case. But then the case was shifted to High Court where Army counsels D S Thakur and Karnail Sigh Wazir challenged the power of the civil courts to try the accused soldiers.

Mian Abdul Qayoom, representing the victims’ families tried to convince the court for trying the accused army officials, but apparently in view of the Supreme Court decision on the Pathribal case, Justice Hasnian Masoodi adjudged otherwise on July 4, 2012. Now the Machil case will follow. The army will hold a court martial for its personnel involved in the fake encounter and the case against accused police personnel will be heard in the civil criminal court separately.

The other trials that were stopped due to the stay order of Supreme Court are expected to start soon. The five cases involving army and state police came up in 2007 when unidentified graves were exhumed in district Ganderbal. The then Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, ordered a probe and special investigation team (SIT) headed by then DIG, Farooq Ahmad was set up to probe.

The two of the exhumed bodies were sent for DNA testing. Tests were conducted by Chandigarh’s Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) who confirmed the identity of one of the missing, Abdul Rehman Padder, picked up by SOG in Srinagar. With the body of Abdul Rehman Padder were found some clues like a SIM card and brief case of another missing, Nazir Ahmad Deka. more 

Artistic Defiance

The Banksy of Kashmir.

The 2008 protests that brought out to the streets Kashmiris in their hundreds of thousands gave rise to a new slogan—‘I Protest.’ The words were depicted on an image of a crowd, an image that spread like wildfire, particularly on social networking sites. It became so famous that it inspired other artists as well, such as MC Kash, who came out with his hugely popular rap song I Protest.  But the person behind the original image still wants to remain undercover. He is a Kashmiri graffiti artist and a painter.  This isn’t the first time he created such a poster. He is also used Howard Zinn’s famous quote ‘There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of KILLING innocent people’ for a poster that also went viral in Kashmir.  All his work remains inspired by, and dedicated to the ‘cause’ of Kashmir.

The “Banksy of Kashmir” was born in 1986 near Lal Chowk. He grew up in an area that was always a hotspot for grenades, IED explosions, encounters, bloodshed, lathi charge and more. Children usually enjoy street cricket in Kashmir, but for the generation of mid 1980s and 1990s, their childhood remained indoors. These children of conflict grew up under unusual circumstances, as did this artist. And that played a significant role in how he chose to express himself. 

“I have witnessed conflict long before I gained my conscience, my childhood passed with the different stages of conflict- massacres, fake encounters, attacks, protests and slogans. As a kid I didn’t know why troopers enter into our homes and take our men and women out, be it during daylight or in the middle of the night,” says the artist. He recalls how he drew his first painting during his sixth grade, which was provoked by the Indian armed forces. more 

The Exception

 

The shrine of Bibi Baria, located in the outskirts of Srinagar in Kralpora, is a shrine exclusively meant for women. The structure is a concrete one, with the main door leading to another where Bibi Baria’s grave is. The grave is surrounded by three windows and a door which usually remain closed. It hides behind green and black glittering curtains on which the names of Allah and some verses from the Quran are inscribed.  Between the two doors there is a space which women use to circle around the grave, some with their eyes closed as tears roll down their cheeks while they narrate their ordeals to Bibi Baria. Wishes of conceiving a child and curing different ailments are common in this shrine. 

This shrine is believed to be of the 14th century. Bibi Baria was the daughter of  Saif-ullah, the then governor of Kashmir (in the era of Sikander). Saif-ullah was actually Seeh Bhat, a non Muslim who was always discriminated against for being from a lower cast in the era of Budshah. “He converted to Islam and became very strict towards Brahmins who later left the valley and shifted to Punjab. ‘Kashir ruz kahai ghare’ (Kashmir is left with only 11 houses) is a phrase of that time and it is believed that Saif-ullah was the reason,” says poet Zareef Ahmad Zareef. After seeing the dedication of  Saif-ullah, Mir Syed Ali Hamadani (popularly known as Shah-i-Hamadan, accompanied by 700 Sayyids spread Islam all over Kashmir) decided to marry his son, Mir Mohammad Hamadani to the lone daughter of Saif-ullah. But Bibi Baria died shortly after her marriage.   

Women who come to visit this shrine are now long time visitors who believe all their wishes have come true. People especially women come to this shrine throughout the week, but on Fridays, women come in the hundreds to offer their prayers in separate halls, specifically meant for prayers following the Imam in the nearby Masjid. The shrine and the Masjid are separated with a wall, and both have their separate entrance. Young girls who haven’t even entered their teenage years also come here, and strongly believe their wishes might come true one day. more 

Public Inconveniences

Doctors have advised Muneer Ahmad to take lot of fluids as he has kidney stones. He works in an insurance company and most of the time he is on the move – meeting clients. He says he has to face embarrassing moments when he needs to go to a bathroom, as there are a just a few in the whole city.

“I use the wash room very frequently no matter if they are without water or are stinking because otherwise I get a terrible abdominal pain,” says Muneer.

Recently while travelling on Zero Bridge, he felt the need of using a bathroom. Luckily there was one nearby. “When I looked for the public utility, it was closed. I was left with no option but to urinate in the open,” says Muneer.

Most public utilities are either in or close to Lal Chowk and in other parts of the city are only a few and far between. Visitors to Srinagar and those who work there have to face immense hardships due to the lack of public conveniences.

Women have to face more problems on this count. Saba is a working woman and leaves home early in the mornings. Once, she needed to use a washroom near Qamarwari but could not find any. Being a girl she hesitated to ask people for public washroom. “I entered a big house. When I knocked at the door a woman of my mother’s age came out. I asked her to please let me use their washroom but she replied, ‘we don’t have a washroom.’ While coming out of the house I saw a school nearby and went there to find a washroom instead,” says Saba. more

Mysterious Minds

Uzma was admitted to a government hospital for abdominal cramps. Doctors advised an ultrasound, which revealed alien objects in her perforated intestine. A subsequent surgery led to the removal of those “alien objects”—polythene, pins, plastic, the handle of a shaver and needles; objects which she had consumed over a long period of time. Despite the alarming results, she feels she hasn’t done anything wrong; she has no interest in knowing what is happening around her, and is seemingly lost in another world. 21-year-old Uzma, the only child of her parents, is a schizophrenic.

Uzma prefers to remain silent, and hardly shows any interest in talking to anyone—family, doctors or others. Her family says she has been stressed because her mother has been pressuring her to qualify the MSC entrance test of the University of Kashmir, which she has already failed once. The pressure lingered since she failed to qualify the MBBS entrance test.

Besides this, family members do not believe that Uzma has any other health problems. However, the doctor treating her says, “She is a case of paranoid schizophrenia (thought disorder) and has been under psychiatric treatment earlier as well, but due to family reluctance, she stopped taking medication, and finally tried to harm herself.”

Schizophrenia, a mental disorder, is characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly includes auditory hallucinations (hearing voices); delusions (bizarre or persecutory in nature), disorganised behavior, disorganised thought and negative feelings. According to doctors, an individual should show at least two such symptoms for six months, in order to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. But people with bizarre delusions can qualify without even waiting for six months. This disease has an onset from the age of late teens, but there have been some patients also who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic at the age of five. It is a rare condition, and worldwide it has a prevalence of one percent.more

Years Of Solitude

Octogenarian Fatima lives in her 37-year-old divorced daughter Shaheena’s house at Zoonimar. Before moving in into her daughter’s house, the mother of two sons and three daughters lived alone.

“My daughter may provide me the last drop of water on my deathbed, this may be why she came back,” says Fatima. Shaheena is divorced, with two children aged 10 and 15.

The family of four lives in a “two-room” house where only a six by seven foot room is functional and a small corridor serves as a kitchen. The other room is just four walls. The house is bereft of a latrine. A bathroom came after five years of struggle.

Fatima once lived happily with her husband, Khalil Muhammad Bhat, and their children. Khalil used to process Pashmina thread. “Those days such shawls were either exported or bought by rich people as these were very expensive,” says Fatima. Khalil’s earnings were sufficient for the family until he died of a heart attack, leaving Fatima to fend for their family.

Both of Fatima’s sons had dropped out of school when they were still in 5th and 4th grade, and her daughters did not go to school at all. All her daughters started doing embroidery on rugs and clothes from a tender age. For the next ten years, things returned to a relative normal life. Fatima married off her children at very young ages. Her daughters contributed for their own marriages. more

The Lone Survivor: Nanak Singh

I was 46 years old in 2000. I was a government employee in Animal HusbandryDepartment. I remember that night, while coming out from the Gurdwara we saw some uniformed men with faces covered running in our streets.

They asked us to remain there as they were conducting a search operation in the area. Some of them had already entered into the houses and had called some of the male members out. They told us they just want to talk to us. I was living near the Gurdwara and they had asked some of my family members also to come out. In total we were 19 people standing in a line. I remember they asked us ‘do you play Holi’ as next day it was the Holi festival. We told them it is not our festival so we don’t celebrate it. Then they asked ‘do you want to drink wine’, they were carrying alcohol bottles with them.

I remember they were calling a man as ‘CO Sahab’, who instructed them to check our identity cards and then let us go. They asked us to show our identity cards and with that that CO opened a fire in air and with him started the other uniformed men. They fired a barrage of bullets on each one of us but before that they asked us to face the wall of the Gurdwara so to fire at us from the back. We all fell on the ground but luckily every bullet targeting me just pierced through my pheran (I have preserved that pheran). I was lying among the bodies. They shot around 15 bullets on each body.

After the shootout the CO asked his men to see if anyone among us was still breathing then shoot another bullet. Then they checked with torch lights and shot single bullets again. Ironically, this time a bullet hit which fracturing my right hip. I still managed to remain silent. Then, I put my hand on the wound which was bleeding profusely. They were about to leave by then and they were laughing loudly. They were calling each other with the names Pawan, Bansi, Bahadur and then finally they left while shouting ‘Jai Hind’. In that incident I lost my son, brother, four cousins and uncle. more