EDITORIALS
A Festering Wound
The Kunan Poshpora mass rape case must be independently investigated.
T
wenty-two years is a long time to prove any crime. Yet the
very fact that the women of the twin villages of Kunan and
Poshpora in Kashmirs northern Kupwara district are still
demanding justice for the alleged mass rape that occurred there
should tell us that it is never too late to revisit some crimes. After
being virtually ignored for more than two decades, these women
are now publicly talking about the night of 23/24 February 1991
when, they allege, soldiers from the 4 Rajputana Rifles of the
68th Brigade, raped at least 32 women during a late night cor-
don and search operation. It took the women almost 10 days to
summon up the courage to file a complaint. Although many
were afraid, 32 women finally registered FIR s at the local police
station and underwent medical examination.
In a normal situation, that should have led to further investi-
gation and a case against the perpetrators of this crime. But in
Kashmir little is normal. In 1991, at the height of the insurgency,
things were nowhere near normal. The primary concern of the
local authorities and the army was to ensure that nothing came
in the way of the fight against militancy. The cries of these women,
as indeed of many others in Kashmir, were simply ignored.
Thus, even though the district magistrate asked for further in-
vestigation, as did the divisional commissioner at that time, Wa-
jahat Habibullah (although this suggestion was deleted from his
final report), the case was virtually closed by the end of 1991.
Perhaps the most damaging in terms of reports on this and
other violations by the army during that period was what is
known as the Verghese Committee report. In June 1991, at
the behest of the Press Council of India, senior journalists
B G Verghese and K Vikram Rao went to report on several accu-
sations against the army that had appeared in the local and
international press. Deliberately overlooking the direct conflict
of interest when they accepted army hospitality and facilitation for
the visit, the two-person committee dismissed the allegations of
the women of Kunan Poshpora as bogus and concluded that it
was a lie being spread at the behest of the militants.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 20, 2013 vol xlviII no 29
Despite this, the story refused to die. In 1992, Asia Watch, an
arm of the international body Human Rights Watch, and Physi-
cians for Human Rights produced a report, Rape in Kashmir:
Crime of War in which they documented the Kunan Poshpora
incident and several other incidents of rape by army personnel.
Over these two decades, there have been several reminders
that this was an issue that demanded closure. Finally, in 2011,
the J&K State Human Rights Commission recommended that
the case be reopened and an independent special investigation
team be constituted to investigate what happened in the twin
villages. What no one expected, however, was that on 18 June
this year, a judicial magistrate, J A Geelani, presiding over a
district court in Kupwara would refuse to accept the closure
report by the police and instead order a fresh inquiry within
three months. As a result of Geelanis order, Kunan Poshpora is in
the news again, the women of those villages are once again talk-
ing about the night of 23/24 February 1991 and the demand for
an independent inquiry into the incident has surfaced yet again.
After such a long lapse of time, it will not be easy to investi-
gate the case so that a prosecutable case can be made. Yet, the
very fact that the womens demand for a fresh investigation has
been heard is significant in itself. If indeed it is proved that what
the women say is true, this will surely go down as one of the
worst atrocities committed by the Indian army in a conflict
situation in India. It is imperative that the Kunan Poshpora
mass rape case be investigated by an independent investiga-
tion team and not by the local police. One must also remember
that many of the cases of human rights violations by security
personnel, raised by civil society groups, have routinely been
dismissed. Yet, as in the case of the unmarked graves, the
horror was even greater than what these groups recorded.
Without justice the wounds these atrocities have inflicted on
Kashmirs people will continue to fester and in the long term
negate all efforts to resolve the many complex issues that com-
prise the Kashmir conundrum.
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