Village Defence Committee: From fighting militants to committing murders in Jammu

On 24 December, Shamima Akhter, 35, a resident of Budhal village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district was preparing lunch when Mushtaq Ahmad, a Village Defence Committee (VDC) volunteer and alleged stalker of Akhter, forcibly entered her house and opened indiscriminate fire, killing the woman and her four-year-old son on the spot. This was the latest killing by a member of a militia which the state government had raised to deal with militancy in the remotest and hilly corners of Jammu region where presence of security forces was minimum during the worst period of Kashmir insurgency. “Her husband is working in Saudi Arabia. In his absence, Ahmad many times forced himself on the woman. She might have resisted which provoked him to kill her and the child too,” a police officer told FirstPost. Just four days earlier, a National Conference worker, Ishtiyaq Choudhary, a resident of Kalakote village in the same district, was killed by another VDC member, following an argument over illegal distribution of ration in the area. The killings triggered protests, twice in a week, following which the demand to ban the militia grew louder. From former chief minister Omar Abdullah to PDP leaders, civil society and Hurriyat Conference, everyone in Jammu and Kashmir wants the VDCs to be abolished. [caption id=“attachment_2567014” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Army personnel train Village Defence Committee members in a file photo. PTI[/caption] According to the official data of Jammu and Kashmir police, there are almost 196 cases against VDC members in various police stations, mostly in Jammu region. These include allegations of grave human rights violations including rape, kidnapping, torture and murder. “They have been of great help in curbing militancy, no one would deny that. But in recent times, they have become threat to the very same people they are supposed to protect,” a senior police officer in Jammu told FirstPost on condition of anonymity. According to this officer, the VDC members are being exploited by politicians to “terrorise” the villagers for local political interests and to garner votes during elections. “In the last elections, they played a very crucial role in making sure that a certain political party gets votes in the areas controlled by them,” the police officer said. The Village Defense Committees came into existence for “self-defence” and “supplementing efforts of the forces to curb militancy and cross-border infiltration” in 1999. Born on the order of Jammu and Kashmir Home Department (Home 293 of 1995, dated 30 September 1995), VDCs were meant to “provide defence” to the villages and to check trans-border movement. The order reads: “Above all, it is a manifestation of the will of the people to actively participate in the efforts to thwart the threat being posed to national security and integrity.” While the threat of militancy significantly went down in the last decade, members of the VDCs started increasingly using their weapons for settling personal disputes, either through intimidation of the gun, or plain murder, as was recently evidenced in Rajouri. The question is: Can the state government afford to ban an organisation which helped it to minimise militancy but has now become a political tool in its own hands? “No,” says J&K’s Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh. “If a member of a political party kills somebody, will they ban that party?” Although it is very difficult to understand the rationale of continuing with the VDCs, especially in the light of the three murders in Rajouri, voices demanding disbanding the militia have grown louder, not only in the separatist camp, whose senior leader Nayeem Khan was arrested for taking out an anti-VDC march in Lal Chowk on Wednesday, but among people across ideological divides. Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies, a rights lobbying group, has filed a PIL against the VDCs, demanding their disbandment. However, the case is moving at “slow pace”: it has been shifted from Srinagar to Jammu on the grounds that the VDCs exist in Jammu only and not in Kashmir. “The Supreme Court of India has declared that the recruitment and arming of tribal people as special police officers (SPOs), as a counter-insurgency measure, is ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’,” said JKCCS Convener Khurram Parvez. The apex court too has came down heavily on state governments for allowing the operation of any civilian vigilante force. “The state of Chhattisgarh shall take appropriate measures to prevent the operation of any group, including but not limited to Salwa Judum and Koya Commandos, that in any manner or form seek to take law into private hands, act unconstitutionally or otherwise violate human rights of any person,” the court said in one of its judgments on Salwa Judum. Asif Bhat, a resident of Rajouri district and a well-known activist says that the Village Defence Committees were needed at one point of time to eliminate militants but these members are increasingly found misusing their rifles to settle personal rivalry. “There is no justification in continuing with these armed militias,” he says Peoples Democratic Party MLA from Rajouri, Qamar Hussain, says the VDC members have created an atmosphere of fear in Pir Panjal area and disarming them has become a necessity, “These people are more dangerous than terrorists. Government has no right to arm a section of people in the name of militancy which doesn’t exist anywhere in Jammu region,” he says. However, politics and communal divisions have taken over common sense. While Kashmir-based politicians demand immediate disbanding of VDCs, political leaders in Jammu have openly demanded their strengthening. “The time is not appropriate to disband the VDCs as militancy has not been eliminated completely. If someone commits a mistake, he should be punished under the law. The VDCs have played a vital role in eliminating militancy from the region,” RSS leader Brig Suchet Singh told Rising Kashmir Newspaper, proposing, instead, to arm VDC members with automatic weapons!