Mohammad Raafi, 28, lost everything even his desire to live. Groaning with pain on a hospital bed, he still gets jitters with a mention of the treatment he faced in police custody in 2003.
Hailing from Narwani village in Shopian, Raafi was picked up by the security forces when an encounter broke out in his compound after “fleeing ultras were surrounded” near his house. Raafi, a government employee, was brutally tortured and then booked under the Public Safety Act, which the high court quashed in 2005.
“After my release, I went for a medical checkup as I was passing blood instead of urine. Doctors diagnosed that the torture rendered both my kidneys dysfunctional. Law enforcers crushed my abdomen with a huge cane. I pleaded with them to consult the doctor, but they paid no heed,” said a frail looking Raafi.
Raafi sold his property to get a kidney transplant done in a Delhi hospital. “But I was still falling short of money. So I took a loan and my brother donated a kidney,” he said.
But Raafi’s case is just one of the countless cases of the human rights violations in the valley. Thousands have been killed, countless injured, tortured and maimed in the last 20 years.
Official figures reveal that human rights violations claimed the lives of at least 16,284 civilians, while 21,126 were injured from 1990-2007. Security forces killed around 20,043 ultras and lost 5,006 personnel between 1990 and 2007.
Human rights activists, however, claim 70,000 people died and 8,000 are still missing.
J&K Coalition of Civil Society programme coordinator Khurram Parvez said, “Torture has gained acceptability because people feel it’s better to be beaten than killed. Political dissent is still not accepted and people are rampantly booked under PSA.”
The Indian Army’s Northern Command, which investigated 1,508 such cases between 1990 and 2009, found only 35 instances were true.
Official figures say 39 officers, 9 junior commissioned officers and 56 other ranks of officers have been punished. “Punishments can range up to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment. The time taken from cognisance of an offence to punishments awarded varies from 2-10 months. In some cases, it has taken a year or two to punish,” an army officer said.
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