SRINAGAR, 6 February 2007 — Indian authorities have launched investigations into allegations that at least three innocent civilians were killed by security forces in Kashmir late last year, officials said yesterday, following public anger. The investigations by the army and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) began after news reports said the three men had been rounded up, killed in mock gunbattles and then passed off as militants.
“Based on reports appearing in the media on alleged involvement of the army/RR (Rashtriya Rifles) in fake encounters in Ganderbal area, the army has ordered an inquiry to investigate these cases,” army spokesman Lt. Col. A.K. Mathur said.
“Disciplinary action will be initiated if anyone is found guilty.” Ganderbal is on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir’s main city. The Rashtriya Rifles, a counter-insurgency arm of the army, operates together with local police and the CRPF against militants in the Himalayan territory.
Over the weekend, authorities arrested four policemen — including two senior officers — accused of killing the three men in Ganderbal and passing them off as militants. “According to initial investigations, army and CRPF personnel also participated with local police in two fake encounters,” said a police official, who did not want to be identified. Local officials say that a policy of giving promotions and cash rewards to security forces for killing militants had led to abuses in the Himalayan territory. Human rights group also blame a culture of impunity. Police said they have so far exhumed at least five bodies as part of their investigation into the Ganderbal killings. The dead men had been passed off as Pakistani or Kashmiri militants.
Kashmir’s main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, demanded an impartial probe into what they say are thousands of disappearances since the insurgency began in 1989.
Thousands of people shouting “punish the killers” took to the streets in Kokernag area, 75 km south of Srinagar, the hometown of two of the victims. “Down with security forces,” shouted the protesters, who also tried to torch the house of a policemen accused in the killings.
Mohammad Yasin Malik, a senior separatist leader, said he planned to begin a three-day fast and called for a general strike today. “It is no longer wise or fair to treat Kashmir’s fake encounters as isolated instances of injustice,” leading TV journalist Barkha Dutt wrote in the Hindustan Times.
“Even conservative, official estimates say more than 1,000 men have “disappeared” in the last two decades. Why then should this judicial probe be limited to investigating just five complaints?” But Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad rejected accusations of growing human rights violations. Making a statement in the state assembly, Azad claimed that since his takeover human rights violations had gone down.
The number of custodial deaths during the National Conference rule from 1996 to 2002 was 67 while during the three years of People’s Democratic Party regime the number came down to 25. During the past one year of his rule, only four cases of custodial deaths were reported, he said.
