This is Gandhi's India
Where statistics show that one woman is raped every hour and where a wife is murdered every two hours.
This is occupied Kashmir
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Where India's 700,000 armed forces are engaged in genocide of the Kashmiri people. About 10 to 12 people are killed every week by Indian paramilitary forces and special task force setup to combat Kashmiri freedom fighters.
These are details of some of the fake 'encounters' in recent days.
Indian forces routinely arrest Kashmiri civilians from their homes or from the road, kill them by torture in custody and then claim that they were 'foreign militants' who ambushed them and were killed in exchange of fire.
April 13, 2000
The bodies of the five persons were exhumed on April 6 and 7 on the directions of the puppet chief minister were claimed by the relatives to be of the five civilians who were missing from various parts of the district after Chattisinghpora massacre of 36 Sikhs. They were identified by the relatives as Zahoor Ahmad Dalal s/o Abdul Gaffar Dalal of Moominabad, Bashir Ahmad s/o Abdul Aziz Bhat of Halan, Muhammad Yousuf Malik s/o Abdul Kabir Malik of Halan, Juma Khan s/o Faqir Khan of Brari Angan and Juma Khan s/o Amir Ullah Khan of Brari Angan.
However, the government is yet to confirm the identity of the deceased persons as it is awaiting the DNA report but the dead bodies have already been handed-over to the relatives for burial. Three police officers including SSP Anantnag, Farooq Ahmad Khan, Dy SP (ops) Anantnag, Tejinder Singh and SHO Achabal, Gazanfar Syed have already been placed under suspension.
The police had claimed that the five men killed at Panchalthan were 'foreign' militants responsible for the massacred 35 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora on March 20. Local residents contested the police claim and said that all the five persons were innocent civilians who had disappeared from various parts of the district in the aftermath of the Chattisinghpora massacre.
It was after an application moved by Anantnag Bar Association to Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) that the Dy SP (headquarters) Anantnag, Sheikh Abdul Rehman as enquiry officer to investigate and report. The preliminary enquiry report submitted to the court today indicated that army and police were to blame for the killing five innocent civilians on 25th March in a fake encounter at Panchalthan.
It may be noted that local people were not allowed to identify the bodies as they were charred beyond recognition and were buried at three different places namely Chogam, Sanglan and Wuzkhah by the 'security forces' themselves. The locals had alleged that the five missing persons were taken by the security forces to Panchalthan forests where they were butchered alive and then burnt to hide their identity. Large number of people took out protest demonstration in Anantnag and demanded exhumation of the bodies. On April 3, police fired upon protestors near Brakpora and killed eight more unarmed civilians. A retired supreme court judge Justice Pandian was appointed to probe the facts behind the Panchalthan killings.
On April 11 the CJM directed the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Mr Javed Makhdoomi to formally register the murder cases and constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) within a week's time. The CJM examined the report of the special investigation officer, Dy SP Sheikh Abdur Rehman, and directed the police to register the murder cases. The court also directed DIG South Kashmir, Javed Makhdoomi, to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) which would be headed by an officer not below the rank of a Dy SP. In the preliminary investigation report Sheikh Abdur Rehman submitted to the court forensic evidence from 4-member team of the Forensic Medicine Department of Government Medical College (GMC) Srinagar and rendered that those killed in the 'encounter' were infact the above missing 5 men who had been recognised beyond any doubt. The puppet state government has now ordered DNA testing.
April 12, 2000
Special Task force operations group in Indian occupied Kashmir beat a prominent freedom fighter, Niyaz Ahmed Sofi to death. Sofi was a well known freedom fighter before joining a political party last year. The police claimed that he was killed on Wednesday during 'exchange of fire' in a suburb of the regional capital, Srinagar but witnesses claim that he was taken from his party office on Tuesday by the Special Task Force, a counter-insurgency unit.
"He was beating in the head in his office with rifle *****, before taking him into custody", one witness has testified.
On Wednesday hundreds of people assembled outside Mr Sofi's house, chanting pro-freedom slogans and demanding an investigation into his death. Police have not released his body to his relatives as yet.
A BBC report has said that, Nasrullah Malik, a divisional commander of the HizbulMujahideen was killed in similar circumstances on Monday night. His relatives say he was killed in a fake encounter, set up by the security forces.
April 11, 2000
Nassar-Ullah Malik son of Mohammed Ismail Malik of Ganderpur, Srinagar was taken into custody at Rajbagh some days back by the Indian security forces killed him in custody. The police force staged a fake encounter at Baba Demb (Khanyar) yesterday where they opened indiscriminate firing late in the evening at Khanyar to give an impression that they had been ambushed. It is at this point that Nassar-Ullah was shot again in cold blood. Thousands of people attended the funeral of Nassar-Ullah at Eidgah grounds. He was later laid to rest in the martyrs' graveyard.
Denying the allegations, the police claimed that 'militants' hurled a grenade on a patrol party from of the Special Operations Group (SOG) at Baba Demb resulting in injuries to the SHO Maharaj Gunj .
April 10, 2000
What Indian forces claimed to have 'gunned down' in an encounter in Beeraw as a 'foreign militant' on March 29, has turned out to be an elderly man who disappeared some time ago and who had been reported missing by his kin to Kalaroos police station in Kapwara District. He was Gulab Mohammed Chechi.
According to reports the security forces from a local camp turned over a bullet riddled body to the local police on March 29th saying that he had been killed in an encounter at Kamru village some 7 kms off Beeraw and had shown him as a foreign militant in the FIR. They also claimed to have recovered arms from his possession.
It was only learning of an unclaimed body lying in the Beeraw Police Station that Gulab's relatives and other villagers rushed there and identified him. The Beeraw police handed over the body to these people for burial in martyr's graveyard. Villagers say Gulab had turned to begging and was arrested from Narbal by the security personnel and then killed in custody.
Fake Encounters in Gandhi's India
