Mass rapes: Kashmir rights group calls for new probe

Human rights panel urges reinvestigation of 1991 mass gang rape by Indian army.


Afp October 23, 2011

SRINAGAR:


A government commission in Indian-administered Kashmir has called for a fresh probe into the alleged mass rapes in two remote villages by Indian army personnel 20 years ago, a report said on Saturday.


Kashmir’s State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has recommended that the government set up a special team to reinvestigate the alleged mass gang rape of at least 31 women by Indian army personnel in 1991.

The women from the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in northern Kupwara district had claimed that they had been gang raped by soldiers during the night of February 23-24 in 1991, at the peak of the insurgency that erupted in 1989.

The incident sparked mass protests across Kashmir, despite the Indian army’s repeated denial of its involvement.

A high-level team from the Press Council of India visited Kashmir in June that year to investigate the case.

The team concluded that the charges against the army were a “well-concocted bundle of fabricated lies” and “a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad”.

The call from the SHRC follows Friday’s announcement by Kashmir’s chief minister that tough emergency laws imposed in Indian Kashmir in 1990 that allow security forces to act with near-impunity would be partially withdrawn.

The SHRC has recently been recording statements from the victims.

“In the course of hearing the case, statements of 18 women were recorded and during which they testified that they were subjected to the atrocity,” the SHRC report said.

It has advised the government that a senior superintendent of police should head the fresh team to probe the case.

The SHRC has also asked the state government to prosecute the then director of the prosecution, who had sought to close the case on the grounds that the perpetrators were “untraceable”.

In addition, the SHRC has recommended that government compensation be paid to each of the victims.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2011. 

COMMENTS (1)

Noman | 12 years ago | Reply

It must be probe and must be punished to crimnal without any bias and take so much time to verdict announce.

It would be highly appreciatd if west raise there convern over it as its also raise its voice in other matters, like Jounarisls Shahzad and Salman Taseer and so on.

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