The Geneva based International Commission of Jurists sent a team of four persons to Jammu and Kashmir in August 1993 to make an on-the-spot study of the situation the team has prepared an interim report and sent that to the governments of India and Pakistan for their comments. For understandable reasons officials in Rawalpindi are leaking Out the report to the sections of Pakistan’s media The Indian media too has picked up bits and pieces of the report and has commented adversely against the findings of the team.
The report if factually true is a grave condemnation of India and its security forces in Kashmir The I.C.J. team noted “The Indian security forces are using rape not only as a weapon against women but also as an instrument to humiliate the whole Kashmiri community.” Similar accounts have been brought out by several human rights groups in their reports on the different incidents in Kashmir. The Indian Army has never admitted any such practice. No independent group has endorsed the Army’s stand. The exception is a report by a group of Indian journalists headed by B. G. Verghese. The latter stands condemned as a hired Christian who figures on a series of Indian government commissions and committees a beneficiary of the system.
The I.C.J. enquiry is limited to Kashmir but there is irrefutable evidence to suggest that India has perfected rape as a national strategy to deal with all independence movements whether in Kashmir or Punjab or Assam. In Punjab women related to militants have been freely picked up kept in police stations for months and gang-raped. There are indications that the Indian government has privately constituted rape gangs of policemen. They travel in unnumbered vans invade houses at night and rape women of families suspected of providing shelter to militants. This iS a routine practice followed in Punjab. No policemen has ever been punished by the Indian government even when specific complaints in hundreds of cases have been reported to the state and central governments. Complaints of Similar nature have also been received from Assam Andhra Pradesh and other areas in political turmoil. The Indian policy is not specific to Kashmir although there it is practiced with vengeance.
The Indian security forces are officially encouraged to continue with the practice. That is explained by the failure of the government to take cognizance of the complaints on that count. In fact journalists and others are hired to refute complaints as and when necessary. Men like B.G. Verghese are available in India by the legion to lend credence to the security forces. The I. C. J. for once has called Indias bluff. India stands condemned in the whole world as a brute an uncivilized power posing grave danger to its own womanhood and the citizens struggling for freedom.
The I.C J. report also bemoans the fact that habeas corpus petitions by victims of Indian policy are useless as courts provide no relief. In Kashmir hospital records are destroyed to remove evidence of police torture.
The I.C.J. must extend its enquiry to Punjab where more glaring facts will become known. In Punjab doctors are asked to sign on the dotted line on medical reports. But the police usually do not allow a situation to be created where a victim has to be medically examined by a doctor. The victims mostly Sikhs are done to death in police stations and the bodies are thrown into canals or burnt. India has a fascist technique of disappearances of Sikhs which they have employed in Punjab. Indian authorities have no convincing answers to the questions raised by international human rights groups.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 1, 1994
