SRINAGAR, 28 June 2007 — Bandipora town in north Kashmir yesterday witnessed protests and a shutdown against alleged molestation of a local girl by two soldiers of the 57 Rashtriya Rifles counter-insurgency force.
Angry villagers paraded the two soldiers naked through the streets after they were “caught trying to rape” a 17-year-old girl, witnesses and newspaper reports said yesterday.
Police said they were investigating the incident, which took place late Tuesday in Kunan, a village north of Srinagar.
“Two army men in civil dress entered our house in the afternoon demanding food and shelter. They asked my mother to leave and tried to rape me,” the girl was reported as saying.
“I resisted and screamed until my neighbors rescued me,” she said, according to the Greater Kashmir daily.
Mohammad Usman, a witness, said that furious villagers had beaten up the soldiers, stripped them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village market.
“Police fired in the air to disperse the protesters and rescued the two soldiers,” said a local police officer. An Indian Army spokesman denied the rape allegations.
“It is all baseless, the allegations were spread by vested interests to malign the army,” he said. The soldiers are currently lodged in the Bandipora police station.
“These two soldiers were on routine patrol duties in Kunan when the civilians took them hostage. Anyway, we have initiated our investigations into the matter,” said Brig. V. Garg, commander of the army’s 81 Mountain Brigade under whose command the Rashtriya Rifles operates in Bandipora district.
The protesters, however, alleged that the soldiers could not have been on patrol duty as they were unarmed and were caught from a house in the village.
