Kunun
Poshpora Mass Rape Incident (JR 140)
Introduction
The
Kunan Poshspora incident occurred
on February 23, 1991, when unit(s) of the Indian
army launched a search and interrogation
operation in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora, located in Kashmir's remote Kupwara
District. It
is reported that at least 100 women were gang raped by soldiers that night.
However, human rights organizations including Human Rights Watchhave
said that the number of raped women could be as high as 150 Although the Indian
government′s investigations into the incident rejected the allegations as
"baseless international human rights organizations have expressed
serious doubts about the integrity of these investigations and the manner in
which they were conducted, stating that the Indian government launched a
"campaign to acquit the army of charges of human rights violations and
discredit those who brought the charges
The
Kunan-Poshpora villages came into the news in February 1991 when some soldiers
were reportedly killed in a militant ambush. The village before that had never
had a problem with the military. That would change in the intervening night of
February 23-24, 1991.
An unspecified number of soldiers of the 4th
Rajputana Rifles cordoned off the entire village in the name of conducting a
“search operation”. All the men were asked to come out of their homes, and were
taken away to another location for interrogation. Once the men were taken away,
soldiers went inside every house, raped and abused women through the night. The
victims of this mass rape ranged in age from 13 to 80 years. Their numbers
remained a matter of conjecture as only 53 married women filed FIRs or police
complaints and got themselves medically examined. The unmarried girls, also
said to number more than 40, did not. It was much too shameful for them and
would seriously impact on their future.
The men, young and old, were tortured to make
them disclose the whereabouts of the militants involved in the ambush against
the army. Third degree torture included the infamous “roller treatment” on
their body and limbs, which has left some of them permanently afflicted, and
electric shocks on their scalp and genitals. No report was filed for the
initial two days by the traumatized villagers out of fear, and stigma.
The Incident
ON FEBRUARY 23, 1991, Kunan and Poshpora, the twin villages in Kashmir became the
site of mass rape of women and sexual torture of men by the Indian Armed
Forces. Though the criminals have escaped justice and Indian governments have
refused to even acknowledge the horror, 24 years later five women who grew up
in the aftermath of that violence combine records, testimonies, fact and
fiction to bring us a history that traverses time as does violence. Below
are excerpts from the Zubaan Books
published Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? the names used for women survivors below
are not their real names but have been given to protect their privacy.
Durri’s Story
It’s a freezing
February in Kashmir. Tonight is the 23rd of February,
1991. It’s a bright moonlit night; the earth in this corner of the world is
covered by a blanket of snow. Deep enough to make you sink into it upto
your knees. The windows of the houses are covered by a thick layer of
frost, almost as if there were another sheet of glass on the first one. When
you rub your hand on the glass it freezes. The cold wind that strikes your
face for a second takes your breath away.
I live in the
village of Kunan, in Kupwara District of Kashmir.
This is my village; I am Durri. I was born here. I am friends with the
mountains, the slopes, the trees, the birds, and the stream that always
seems to be in a rush. I am a young girl, perhaps just like you. I love to
see stars and to dream. Usually by this time I am in my bed cuddling my
sister Fatima while the kangri — a Kashmiri fire pot — lies in the middle.
This is our private time, though there is not much privacy in my two-room
house, with my younger brother Hussain dancing on our heads. He is the
youngest and most adorable. We don’t have much by way of entertainment
here except a radio, which is mostly used by my grandfather, “Bab”, I call
him, to listen to the news and Kashmiri folk songs. That doesn’t mean
we have a boring life, every night we sing wedding songs probably in
preparation for my wedding. Tonight we have company as well, my friend
Amina who is from the neighbouring village of Poshpora has come to
join us. Just as we begin singing my mother starts rebuking us, “Is this
what you will do when you are married; learn some cooking and stitching
now. Make us proud when you get married.” My father, contrary to this,
loves our singing and giggling. I call my father “touth”, which in Kashmiri
means one’s most favourite person. He is a constable in the Jammu and
Kashmir Police. Most of the time he is not at home.
My grandfather
dislikes my father’s profession because he lost his
elder son, my uncle, to a bullet from an army gun. Awkward, isn’t it,
losing a son to the bullet of security forces while your other son is a serving
policeman. My uncle, Mohammad Iqbal, was one of those young people
who thought that politically resisting the occupation of Kashmir by India
had not borne any fruit, just fake promises from the time of Pandit
Nehru and still counting. He was martyred in an encounter with the army
in Srinagar. It might be strange for you to hear words like “occupation”,
“resistance”, “promises of Pandit Nehru” from a village girl like me, but
all this is what my uncle told me. He was the one who answered my
questions about blood and blasts on streets when others said I was too
young to know all this. He told me Kashmir’s story not just starting
from the Partition and the promises made by Pandit Nehru, but from
the beginning of Dogra rule. Then, one day we were told he was no more.
The last thing I remember about him was his coffin being carried by many
locals, followed by people from five of the nearest villages. After that day
I remember in each army cordon we were given special treatment, more
terrible than those houses that were far from the resistance. My mother
would stand with us in the lawn and let the army vandalize all they could.
They would ask her to show them hidden weapons. She would cry and tell
them we didn’t have any such thing. She would tell them about my father
being a police officer, they would not care. All they thought of us was that
we were a militant’s family, who had dared to resist the state. They would
form cordons in the evenings or late in the night, or even early in morning,
and this special treatment to my family would be repeated no matter what.
Somehow, I was used
to it now. Yet tonight I have this strange feeling
of worry. Intuitions are really scary at times. I don’t know the reason I
should confess. Since I am being very honest to you, I should talk about
my fear. Every night I sleep with this fear. My village is close to the
Line of Control (LOC) and far from peace. Every night I recite Surah
Fatiha. I have been doing this every night since I saw blood on a street
in Kupwara on the way back from school and heard people chanting
slogans: “Hum Kya Chahatai? Azadi” (What do we want? Freedom)
way before my uncle was martyred. Yet till tonight I had no idea that
the ones who call themselves our defenders and protectors could pierce our
souls without using artillery. Not until now, when the lull of the night is
broken by a knock on our door.
Every fiction has
some facts, and every fact appears fictional if
we study it hard enough. We can never know the complete truth about
anything, no matter how hard we try. The fiction above is inspired by
my meetings and conversations with the people of Kunan Poshpora, and
my study of the statements given by the victims to “fact” finders, police
and reporters. It was written as an answer to the questions that came up
in my mind, to my overactive thoughts, which arose while dealing with
documents and individual details till my head became dizzy. I tried to get
answers through my study of the facts of that night but I could never get
a complete answer. I was looking for answers to questions like, how would
a girl from this village feel after becoming a victim of mass rape? But I
realized that none of us can have an answer for this…
Women Victims/Survivors
According to
the women, “rape” is not an adequate word to describe what was done to them. It
was not rape — it was war. Women were
caught and held by a minimum of 5–6 army men as their husbands, fathers and
sons were forcefully separated from them. Pushed to the walls, they shouted and
screamed for help, for mercy. Their screams were not answered. Guns were pointed
at their chests and mouths. They were told not to shout or else they would be
shot. Army men were drunk, and were seen drinking during the operations. They
smelled of liquor. They tore the women’s pherans (long traditional gowns worn over the
clothes). They pulled down their trousers and raped them. While raping them
they continued to consume liquor. They took turns, and sometimes took two
rounds of a particular house. The women resisted but in vain.
Minor girls,
those dumb and deaf, the physically handicapped, and the pregnant women were
not spared either. Mothers were raped in front of their daughters. Grandmothers
and their granddaughters were raped in the same room. The survivors said that
they had bite marks on their chests, everywhere on their body, even on their
hips. Many of them described bleeding from the mouth, from their private parts
and from other injuries.
One of the
survivors in her statement to the police given in March 1991, narrated to
JKCCS/SGKP that she heard a knock on the door at 11 p.m. As the door was opened
army men barged in and took her husband and brother-in-law with them. Some
remained behind and searched the house. As they found nothing “objectionable”
they caught hold of her and raped her. “They were having liquor while raping
me. My children screamed but there was no one to help me”. She fainted and only
regained consciousness in the morning. Her husband and her brother-in-law too
returned in the morning. Her brother-in-law was bleeding and was in a critical
condition. Some days later, the police came to record her statement along with
the Deputy Commissioner. She handed over her clothes as evidence. They were
provided medical treatment, she states. She also recollects that she saw police
constables with the army that night but says that, “they could not help me.
They had themselves been beaten by army men”.
All houses had
similar stories, some concerning one or two and some concerning entire
households of women. Many of them told us that the minor teenaged girls who
were in the house were also raped, but that they collectively decided not to
mention their names to the police. In many of the statements, the survivor
mentions only her own name or that of married relatives. Often they mention
that all the “vulnerable” women other than themselves were away from the house
that night, perhaps to protect them. Chasfeeda recollected to a team of
researchers from JKCCS/SGKP:
“I
remember at 11:30 p.m., there was a knock. There were 20–21 army men. Some
entered the house.”
After half an
hour of her husband being taken away, some army men came back and raped her in
the dark.
“They had
kept the weapons on the ground while raping me. I refused to be examined by the
military doctor and gave my statement to the police only, who came after seven
days. I also produced leftover liquor bottles.”
She stated
that her older son was also badly tortured, given electrical shocks in his
testicles, and chilli powder inserted in his anus. His condition was critical
and he remained bedridden for weeks after his torture.
Minor girls
were also raped, but only three — one of them a Polio patient — dared to get themselves
examined. This reluctance was very likely due to the social stigma attached to rape and the
fear that it would become difficult to get them married. The attempt at hiding
the rapes of the minors ultimately did not protect them. The stigma of rape got
attached to the names of the village women–minor, married or old, whether they
officially spoke about their rapes or hid them.
There are
heart-rending stories of a deaf-and-dumb girl and pregnant women being raped.
Tamana was in an advanced state of pregnancy, nine months pregnant, when she
was raped. Due to the rape she delivered a baby with a fractured arm, a few
days after the incident. Another toddler was snatched from her mother when she
tried to hug the baby to her chest. The baby was thrown out of the ground floor
window. In case of Tamana, her father narrated to me, how his grandchild became
part of war even before coming into this world.
“My
family consisted of my old father, an eldest son working in the police
department and his wife aged 20 years, my second son, aged 15 years, my third
son, aged 12 years, three daughters, my wife, Ufaq and my stepmother. We lived
in a two and a half storey house. Both the storeys consisted of four rooms
each. Tamana my eldest daughter was pregnant at that point and was at our place
i.e. her parental home when she was raped.”
Tamana’s
mother, Ufaq is a survivor herself. She (Ufaq) had a clearer idea of what happened,
as she was at home with Tamana when she was raped. They had both been asleep
for about an hour in a room on the ground floor. Ufaq’s father-in-law was
sleeping in the next room while her husband was sleeping with their two sons on
the first floor. She narrated:
“I heard
an unusual sort of noise and thought it was a cat. After sometime I went out of
my room and saw three army men through the windows of my father-in-law’s room.
I was able to see their uniforms in the moonlight. They were wearing helmets
and jackets as well. My aged father-in-law was paralyzed and bedridden. He was
unable to do anything. I lit a lantern, opened the door and ran upstairs with
my daughter to the second floor. I opened the door to the porch, and was
planning to jump out as I realized there was no other option. I told my
daughter that we should leave. My daughter, who was nine months pregnant, was
terrified. She gripped my hair tight, and started screaming, “don’t leave me
alone at their (the army’s) mercy”. When the army men entered, I saw they had
zips of their pants already opened and they had clearly come with the intention
of raping us.”
They asked for
keys to the other rooms. Her husband had already had been taken away by the
army. Her daughter Tamana had been separated from her. Tamana was taken to
another room and raped there. According to Ufaq:
“Three
army men caught hold of me and 8–10 army men raped me in turns. They had huge
battery torches with them and they used them to see my naked body, while making
lewd remarks. They raped me for several hours. After sometime I fell
unconscious because of the pain.”
Tamana gave
birth to a child, who had a fractured arm, after three days of the incident.
The Medico-Legal Certificate of Tamana’s son, dated 21.03.2014, confirms his
birth and the injury to his arm, “due to manhandling by soldiers”.
One of the survivors was 13 to 14 years of age (as per the SHRC
judgment), and about 16 years old according to her own statements to
JKCCS/SGKP, but she was not included among the ‘minors’ in the police record as
her hymen was ruptured; she had been married 11 days prior to this fateful
night. On the night of 23rd and 24th February she was in her in-law’s house
when the security personnel of 4 and 24 Rajputana Rifles forced their entry
into the house. The men were ordered to move out of the house and 4–5 army men
entered her room and raped her. In the morning, she was rescued by the
villagers when army had left the village and was taken to a doctor for
treatment and examination. In her police statement the same survivor states
that she raised an alarm but no one came to her rescue. She had resisted hard
but was unable to overpower the army men.
Ocean of
Tears, a documentary on Kunan Poshpora Mass Rape in Kashmir
The soldiers
ignored the small children who were crying and screaming as their mothers,
sisters and grandmothers were raped. Meanwhile, the Commanding Officer of the
army was at the interrogation centre, barely a few yards away. He was clearly
aware that there was something “unusual” going on, as several witnesses report
that he shone a powerful torch on the window and shouted at the soldiers to
keep the noise down, during the rapes. It does seem like — as the women have said — the soldiers had orders to
rape them. A toddler was thrown out of the window by soldiers from the ground
floor of the house, and later rescued by the police constable Abdul Ghani in
the early hours of 24th February, when he was taking rounds of the houses of
the village. The child had been lying on the snow for several hours. The
constable picked him from the garden area and kept the child on the verandah of
the house. He went into the house and, as he had done in other homes, covered
the naked, barely conscious survivor of sexual violence he found there with a
blanket. He told her that her child was on the verandah and was slightly injured,
but was otherwise fine. But the mother was unable to move and could not get her
child back into the house, till her husband returned…
The
Knock on Durri’s Door
My sister and
I hugged the kangri even closer. We were scared of that
knocking. It seemed someone
wanted to break down the door of our house.
My grandfather quickly got
up and opened the door. I heard few words
“Kitnai admi ho ghar mai”
(how many men are you in the house). “Koi
nahi sahib bas mai hun”
(no one, just me). I tried to stand up. I was
stopped by someone. It was
Amina, she held my hand tight. As I turned
towards her, I could see
the disapproval on her face. Now I tried to hear
more clearly. I noticed
Amina and Fatimah were doing the same. In middle
of all this I could hear a
female voice. My mother was pleading with
someone. Suddenly ‘toth’
screamed “Haa Khudayo” (Oh God!). Within
no time an army soldier
appeared infront of us. I could smell something
awful from him and then I
saw that he had a bottle of alcohol in his hand.
My throat was dry. I could
not even scream. I could not even stand, it
was as if the earth had
gripped me. My sister Fatimah and Amina held
me tight from both sides.
I could feel their fingers digging into my arms.
From one the soldiers
became six as others joined the first one. I wanted to
scream. I could not hear
my grandfather speak. I didn’t know where they
took my mother. One of
them gripped my hair. I held his feet. I remember
begging him, “khuda kai
liyai humai chhod do, hum nai kuch nahi kiya’
(for god’s sake please
leave us, we are innocent). I even bowed my forehead
onto his shoes. He dragged
me to kitchen. My mother was already there.
I screamed with all my
energy, “Mouji meh bachaay tii” (mother, save
me). How could she, I
don’t want to share all that I saw and remember
happening to her. My
pheran was torn and with that my whole life.
When I
regained consciousness, my head was blank and I felt numb.
My face was wet. I
realized I was weeping. I was naked, not just my body
but my soul. My mother was
in that room with me. She was unconscious or
pretending to be. She had
turned her face away from me. I heard someone
crying. It was my brother,
he covered me with something. I don’t remember
clearly what it was. I
haven’t asked him till now. We never spoke about
that night again. But I
remember I could not feel my lower body.
That one night
has become my life. No matter what I do, where I go or
what I think. That night
never leaves me. It’s with me all the time, when
I pray, when I cook, when
I clean myself. I curse them (the army) all the
time and will curse them
all my life. People console me. They say you must
forget and move on. But
that’s easier said than done. It’s difficult; it’s like
losing your eyes and
believing you never had them.
I did not give
a statement to police. My family feared no one would
marry me. I never married.
It’s not that I don’t want to but my health does
not allow me. I am not fit
to marry. I don’t want to ruin someone’s life.
Besides when I saw how
girls from my village were being treated by their
in-laws, I chose not to
marry. We never spoke to anyone about my friend
Amina being raped. When we
met after that night, we cried and cried. We
are still friends but we
have an unspoken rule — never speak about that
night. I am a rape
survivor from Kunan and Poshpora — I am breathing
but not alive.
Investigations
Following the district magistrate's report,
increased publicity about the incident led to strong denials from Indian
military officials. On March 17, Mufti Baha-ud-Din Farooqi, Chief
Justice of the High Court of Jammu
and Kashmir, led a fact-finding mission to
Kunan Poshpora. Over the course of his investigation, he interviewed 53 women
who claimed to have been raped by the soldiers, and tried to determine
why a police investigation into the incident had never taken place. According
to his report, villagers claimed that a police investigation into the event had
never commenced because the officer assigned to the case, Assistant
Superintendent Dilbaugh Singh, was on leave Farooqi later stated that in his 43
years on the bench he "had never seen a case in which normal investigative
procedures were ignored as they were in this one. Just a few months later, in
July, 1991, Dilbaugh Singh was transferred to another station without ever
having started the investigation. On March 18, divisional commissioner Wajahat Habibullah
visited the village, and filed a confidential report, parts of which were later
released to the public. He concluded:
"While the veracity of the complaint is highly
doubtful, it still needs to be determined why such complaint was made at all.
The people of the village are simple folk and by the Army’s own admission have
been generally helpful and even careful of security of the Army’s officers…
Unlike Brig. Sharma I found many of the village women genuinely angry … It is
recommended that the level of investigation be upgraded to that of a gazetted
police officer.
District Magistrate, S.M Yasin, visited the village two days
after the incident to investigate.According to his report, “the armed forces
behaved like violent beasts.” He identified the soldiers as members of 4th
Rajputana Rifles and said they rampaged through the village from 11:00 pm on
February 23 until 9:00 am the next morning.
In
response to criticism of the government's handling of the investigation, the
army requested the Press Council of India to investigate the incident. The investigative team visited Kunan Poshpora in June, more
than three months after the alleged attacks. Upon interviewing a number of the
alleged victims, the team claimed that contradictions in their testimony
rendered their allegations of rape "baseless. The team interviewed
hospital officials who stated that one of the women who had been pregnant at
the time of the incident had given birth to a child with a fractured arm just
four days afterwards. She claimed that she had been kicked during the rapes; a
pediatrician who visited the village as part of the Jammu and Kashmir People's
Basic Rights Committee, confirmed her story. The Press Council team claimed that the fetus had been
injured during delivery. Medical
examinations conducted on 32 of the women between March 15 and 21, nearly one
month after the incident, confirmed that the women had wounds on their chests
and abdomens, and that the hymens of three of the unmarried women had been
torn. The team claimed that "such a delayed medical examination proves
nothing" and that the medical findings were typical among villagers. Ultimately, the team concluded that the charges against the
army were, "well-concocted bundle of fabricated lies" and "a
massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathizers and mentors
in Kashmir and abroad...for reinscribing Kashmir on the international agenda as
a human rights issue. In stark contrast of the purported allegations of abuses,
these investigations concluded the allegations themselves are "grossly
exaggerated or invented".
"The Kunan rape story on close investigation turns out
to be a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathizers and
mentors in Kashmir and abroad as a part of sustained and cleverly contrived
strategy of psychological warfare and as an entry point for reinscribing
Kashmir on the International Agenda as a Human
rights issue. The loose-ends and the
contradictions in the story expose a tissue of lies by many persons at many
levels".—Investigation Committee The Press
Council's dismissal of all the Kunan Poshpora allegation, and the manner in
which it carried out its investigation was widely criticized. Human Rights
Watch wrote:
While the results of the examinations by themselves could
not prove the charges of rape, they raised serious questions about the army's
actions in Kunan Poshpora. Under the circumstances, the committee's eagerness
to dismiss any evidence that might contradict the government's version of
events is deeply disturbing. In the end, the committee has revealed itself to
be far more concerned about countering domestic and international criticism
than about uncovering the truth.
Asia
Watch, in its 1991 report, stated:
"The alacrity with which military and government
authorities in Kashmir discredited the allegations of rape and their failure to
follow through with procedures that would provide critical evidence for any
prosecution – in particular prompt medical examinations of the alleged rape
victims — raise serious concerns about the integrity of the
investigation...Given evidence of a possible cover-up, both the official and
the Press Council investigation fall far short of the measures necessary to
establish the facts in the incident and determine culpability
The
United States
Department of State, in its 1992 report on
international human rights, rejected the Indian government's conclusion, and
determined that there was "credible evidence to support charges that an
elite army unit(s) engaged in mass rape in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora
Further
Investigations
Following the release of the Press
Council's report, Indian
authorities
dismissed all of the allegations of mass rape as groundless. No further
investigations were conducted. In October 2011 The State Human Rights
Commission asked the government to reinvestigate the mass rape case and
compensate the victims. They also called for proceedings to be taken against
the then Director Of Prosecutions who had sought closure of the mass rape case
and not investigation. Meanwhile, social
stigma generated out of this incident has resulted in women of this area facing
difficulties in getting married even today
Social impact
The
incident has had a devastating impact on the villages. A feature report
published in The Indian Express on July 21, 2013 showed the victims and their families are
being socially ostracised. Only two students have gone to university since the alleged
massive rape; most choose to drop out after eight class than bear the
"taunts and barbs directed at them when they go to the other
villages" of Trehgam and Kupwara to continue their studies. The only
government school in the two affected villages teaches up to standard eight. Families unscathed by the incident even in the affected
villages have banned all social contact with the victims' families. Parents say
it is difficult to marry off their children. At least one family has confessed
to marrying off their 16-year-old daughter to a 50-year-old divorcee and father
of three because "none of the young men in the village came forward"
and "a search for prospective grooms outside the village was never an
option after the incident. The villagers from the two villages formed
Kunanposhpora Coordination Committee (KCC) in 2007 to seek justice for the
victims. The KCC head, a 70-year-old man Ghulam Ahmad Dar, told The Indian
Express in July 2013, "If a reporter of a human rights group comes to
our village, they are followed by policemen and Intelligence Bureau officials." The newspaper reported the villagers live
in a constant state of wariness because of policemen and intelligence
officials' visits who often come in plain clothes and most of them see things
outside the frame
The
psychological trauma is even more than the physical one. Almost every woman we
spoke to carries emotional scars and psychological stress which requires expert
and sympathetic medical attention as soon as possible. While some of the women
are now in their Sixties, many of them are still not 40, and have many years
ahead of them. They need to be healed in body and mind.
The women face an additional and aggravated
social crisis. While we have no information of post-1991 incidence of divorce
of such women by their husbands, their narratives hint at considerable tension
within the families, and in their society. There is evidence of they being
ostracised. For the young women, the situation is far more grim. The unmarried
rape victims were quietly married off to relatives or in distant villages as no
one was willing to wed them in the area.
The two villages continue to suffer this
ostracisation and the stigma. Young men repeatedly told us how they had to
change schools and colleges because they were taunted by teachers, classmates
and others as coming from “that village where your mothers and sisters were
raped by the soldiers.” Even today, such taunts face people of Kunan and
Poshpora when they go to Kupwara or beyond and are asked where they come from.
Many young men and women have given up their studies entirely, while a few
brave ones now study in institutions far away.
There
is hardly any employment for the youth, other than as labour or working in
their family farms, which are small holdings of paddy fields in the shadow of
the surrounding mountains.
The village seems to have been ignored by
officialdom. There is little to show by way of development. A room with a board
of a health centre remains closed, with no medical personnel coming to work in
the village.
Other than the cash once distributed almost
clandestinely by a State Minister, people say there has been no government
compensation paid either to the women victims of gang rape, or the men who were
tortured.
