Why the people of Kashmir resent probes

A day after Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took over the reigns of the state, on 7 of January 2009, a few metres away from his official residence, on the heavily guarded Gupkar Road, Abdul Rashid Reshi, 40, a resident of veer Saran, Pahalgam was crossing the main gate of the Commander 31, Sub Area’s residence, when he was fired upon by Army personnel, killing him on the spot. Reshi was hearing impaired, the investigation had revealed. He had crossed the barbed wires, scaled the boundary wall, and entered the Army camp. He crossed two gates hearing no warnings, and the troopers fired upon him resulting in his death. The then Superintendent of Police, Srinagar, Syed Afadul Mujtaba had said, “No weapon was recovered from the deceased. Only a _kangri_was found on the spot.” Abdullah, who heads the Unified Command in Jammu and Kashmir, sought an enquiry, following which the Army ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. Ghulam Qadir, Reshi’s brother, says justice in the case is yet to be done. “What has happened to that inquiry, no one knows.” This was among the hundreds, if not thousands, of probes ordered in Kashmir with the result yet to be declared even after five years. [caption id=“attachment_111041” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] An earlier protest in Kashmir. AP[/caption] Again, the Omar Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir, while trying to calm tempers in the troubled district of Shopian, has ordered a magisterial probe into the killing of five people killed in two different incidents of firing by the CRPF. A District Magistrate would be conducting the probe to find out what circumstances led to the firing incidents on September 7 and 11 at Gagran. Although there is no given time-frame for completion of the inquiry, people in the Valley already believe this to be another futile exercise. “Every time there is public outrage against rights violations, the state government wastes no time in ordering a probe. With an aim to defuse public anger, even if the culprits are indicted in the crime, they are never tried,” Ajaz Lone, a researcher in Kashmir University’s Sociology department, told Firstpost. On 9 September, a joint statement issued by Kashmir’s prominent leaders cutting across party lines has said an “immediate and serious approach” needs to be taken in the Shopian firing case so that culprits can be booked under law. “Any casual or ad-hoc advances to put the problem on the backburner will only precipitate the crisis further,” the statement reads. Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami- State Secretary CPI (M); Hakim Mohammad Yasin- Chairman PDF; Abdul Rashid Kabuli Chairman JKNDF; Sheikh Abdul Rehman- state president Samajwadi Party; Abdul Rehman Tukru- State Secretary CPI have even questioned the outcome of these inquiries. “The inaction on part of the government to act on the findings of these inquiries and probes, has eroded the credibility of all these probes and inquires. People now perceive these probes as a handy weapon to cool down tempers and buy time after innocent civilians’ killings.” But, as rights activists say, there is ‘zero percentage of conviction’ in human rights violations by the armed forces in the Valley. “Commissions appointed by the government have no power to punish anyone, and even if they recommend that the government punish someone and the government complies with the recommendation, the accused, most of the times, appeals against the decision,” says Khuram Parveez, convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a rights group in Srinagar. “The amount of prosecution, even after the induction of people by probes and commissions, when it comes to the Kashmiri people killed by armed forces is Zero,” Parveez adds. The present inquiry set up by the state government is not the first. It is the seventh in the last nine months. The state government and the armed forces have ordered 63 inquiries since January 2009, to look into the circumstances leading to different incidents of human rights violations and killings by armed forces. Political analysts in the Valley believe the present inquiry could also end up in a trail of impunity. “This is not the first time that a probe has been ordered to bring justice to the victims of human rights abuses by security forces. The AFSPA has ensured that the army enjoy impunity,” Ajaz Ahmad, who teaches at the political science department of Kashmir University, says. Only recently, the government ordered an inquiry into the Kishtwar communal violence, in which three people died and more than eighty were injured. Property worth millions was reduced to cinders. The state government on 23 Aug appointed Justice R C Gandhi as head of a one-man Commission of Inquiry. The appointment has been made under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1962. Justice Gandhi would be visiting Kishtwar on Saturday, more than 20 days after the announcement of the commission. The trend of ordering probes into incidents of violence peaked during Mufti Mohammad Syed-led PDP-Congress coalition government in 2003. In that year, 33 probes were ordered. One of them was for the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits by unidentified gunmen in Nadimarg, Shopian. Under the same regime in 2004, 25 probes were ordered while 21 probes were set up in 2005. In 2006, 11 probes were ordered. In 2007, 12 probe committees were set up, one among them for a fake encounter of three men and subsequent killing of a woman who witnessed the encounter, which was followed by violent clashes in which an infant was killed. During Farooq Abdullah’s rule from 1996 to 2002, 42 probes were instituted into custodial killings, disappearances, rapes and other human rights abuses by the armed forces. From 2002 to 2005 the PDP-led coalition government ordered 77 probes. The Congress led government ordered 28 from 2005 six probes were ordered. During governors rule in seven months in 2008 six probes were ordered. In 2008, during the Amarnath land row agitation that left 63 protesters dead, eight probes were ordered. In 2009, 19 probes were ordered including the Justice Jan Commission on May 31 into the alleged double rape and murder case in Shopian and the Bomai killings. In 2010, the state ordered probes into a number of killings by security forces. In 2011, 10 probes were ordered including into the alleged custodial killing of Nazim Rashid in Sopore by the police. This fresh probe ordered into the killing of five people in Shopian by the state government is the seventh this year. “It looks like the ordering of probes by the state government is a customary ritual by successive state governments. The emphasis is on the announcement of the probe. The time takes care of public resentment, which fizzles out with each passing day, and a fresh killing or rape necessitates another probe,” says Lone, the sociologist. “There is no doubt that these probes have become an insult to the whole justice delivery system,”  Ahmad, the political science lecturer.