Between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its major anti-India resource Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), other terrorist tanzeems raised by the ISI and separatists etc. in Jammu and Kashmir eternally loyal to them, there is no dearth of saboteurs for peace and progress.
Separatists had been feeling quite down in the dumps since the beginning of this year owing to Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Bhat’s admission that militants, and not Indian security forces, were to blame for the killing of top separatist leaders. It vindicated the stand of the J&K police, whose DG, Kuldip Khoda, had said: “Bhat has said what we have been saying all along.” People’s Conference chairman Sajjad Lone, son of the late Abdul Gani Lone, was the first to blame the ISI and hardline separatists for the killing of his father in 2002. He wanted the truth to be made public, but was silenced after a backlash from some quarters.
Not bearing to see a relatively peaceful summer, a reasonably good tourist season and the Amarnath yatra proceeding fairly smoothly, the separatist were desperately looking for an opportunity to rekindle fires. Two opportunities came together.
The first was of a woman in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district, alleging that two Armymen raped her after abducting her when she came out of her makeshift home at Bhek-Chiranbal. The second one was of Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, a US citizen detained on suspicion of links to a decades-long effort of allegedly funnelling millions of dollars to Washington to lobby US politicians on behalf of Kashmiri causes. Both incidents occurred on July 19, 2011. While the possibility of the alleged rape being engineered by separatists/Pakistani terrorists in the Valley cannot be ruled out, Fai’s arrest was in the US was by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Following the allegations, massive protests broke out in the area with police registering a case under Section 376 of the RPC and a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the police formed to probe the incident.
The Army, which instituted its own inquiry immediately, has assured complete cooperation in investigations with the local police and did not rule out the involvement of soldiers as well as terrorists in the rape incident. According to sources in the Northern Command headquarters, the J&K police FIR does not reflect the two individuals as Army personnel. The inquiry so far has not pointed towards any Army personnel as being responsible for this incident. According to some media reports, the woman stated that the two men were wearing Army uniforms, had beards and spoke in Gujjari dialect. There is no battalion with troops belonging to J&K in the area she lives in. Many terrorists wear Army-like uniforms/fatigues.
The statement of family members of the victim contradicts her claim that she was picked up by two men in uniform on July 19 and allegedly gangraped for two days before being let off on July 2, because her mother-in-law stated before the police that she suffered from mental illness and was taking medicines for it and that she was at her home on the day she claimed she was sexually abused. The mother-in-law reportedly stated that her daughter-in-law went missing on the morning of July 20 and not since the evening of July 19. When she asked her daughter-in-law about her overnight absence, she did not say anything but started beating her chest. Thinking that she was in pain, they took her to Manzgam hospital where she told the doctor that she had been raped. Both the mother-in-law and the woman’s husband reportedly told the probe team that she was missing for only one night. She reportedly could not explain why she had raised no alarm at the time of her abduction even though her “dhok” (mudhouse) where she is alleged to have been raped was less than 50 metres away and her mother-in-law and husband were home at that time. Asked if there was any movement of the Army or the police around their area on the day the alleged rape took place, she said there was no such presence of uniformed men in the area. The medical report reportedly states that there were no marks of injury on her body and private parts and that a vaginal swab had been sent for further investigation. In response to a question by SIT officials, the mother-in-law said she cannot say if her daughter-in-law had been raped. “Only she can answer that question,” she added.
Lt Gen. S.A. Hasnain, GOC of the Chinar Corps, who held a press conference at Srinagar on July 22, stated: “I want to make it clear that this is an allegation and if there is truth in it, then it is a criminal act which warrants strict action against the guilty… The Army is giving full cooperation to the police and the state government. We have also ordered our own probe into the incident… There are different versions of the incident. There are inimical forces who want to create a situation for the state government and the security forces. There are emerging versions of this. There will be many new versions which will come in the next few days. Therefore, we cannot go by a single version. We are not foreclosing any option at all. We are aware that not only the Army, but militants also wear combat uniforms. We conducted an operation against militants a fortnight ago in the same area and the militants are under pressure. Therefore, this was something not unexpected at all. I was expecting it.” He informed that militants also used radio sets as was alleged by the woman and that certain individual elements were out to disturb peace and tranquillity in the Valley. He further said: “It is impossible that two Armymen will remain out of their unit for 48 hours with weapons… Our presence in Kashmir is omnipresent. So we are vulnerable. It’s imperative that we present the real picture before the people… A video provided by the police shows the victim saying that one particular individual had abducted her. There is no reference of the security forces. There is also no mention of the Army in the FIR filed by the police at Damhal Hanjipora police station.” He said that in the last 24 hours two different versions about the circumstances have come to the fore. “In the next week I am sure five more versions regarding the incident will appear and all would be at variance with each other,” he said.
Head of the hardline faction of the All-Parties-Hurriyat-Conference (APHC) Syed Ali Shah Geelani ranted that Fai, arrested on suspicion of being a Pakistani agent, is a victim of a “diplomatic conspiracy” and is all out to try to paralyse life in the Valley with bandhs. He and his ilk have from time to time been responsible for irretrievable losses of earnings for the large wage-earning section of Kashmiris and of education for the school-going children. Commenting on Fai’s arrest, home secretary R.K. Singh is reported to have said: “Yes, his arrest was long overdue… We had a fair degree of suspicion that the money he (Fai) used to get was given by the agencies in Pakistan.”
The US justice department said Fai and Zaheer Ahmad, 63, a US citizen and a resident of Pakistan, face five years in prison if found guilty. The US complaint alleges Fai and Mr Ahmad conspired illegally as Pakistani agents, falsifying and concealing material facts that they had a duty to disclose in dealings with the United States government. The allegations, which come amid increasingly strained ties between the United States and Pakistan, centre on the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), a Washington-based group founded in 1990 and is suspected of being run by the ISI.
The killing of two girls in Sopore by suspected LeT terrorists in February this year had evoked sharp reactions from chief minister Omar Abdullah, who referred to the “muted condemnation” of the shocking incident by citizens and separatist leaders as “unfortunate”. “I find it difficult to understand. Under these circumstances, I doubt anybody would have the guts to stand up and say they did it and why they did it… I think this in itself brings out the contradictions that exist in Kashmir because if there was even the slightest of indication that these deaths have been the result of high-handedness of the security forces, today, the whole Valley would have erupted in flames. But because these killings were by the militants, the condemnation is muted or the condemnation does not come at all,” he said. This time on the alleged rape, however, Mr Abdullah’s statement that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act wouldn’t be allowed to come in the way of justice is uncalled for. It is again time for Mr Abdullah to avoid political pitfalls and practise statesmanship and good overnance.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi