“Two of them punched me in the gut until I vomited and urinated.' New torture accounts from India-administered Kashmir which has been under lockdown since August 5.
"What if they circulate the video and the video goes viral?" This fear often drives Abid Khan to suicidal thoughts, and for a month now, he has been resisting his family’s insistence on a comprehensive medical and psychiatric check-up.
“As I struggled in pain, my wrists and ankles got bruised. The bruises became worse after every beating,” he said. Before the torture began, Khan said, an army officer told him that he had invited Riyaz Naikoo, the most-wanted Kashmiri rebel commander, to his wedding in July. The officer accused him of building a hideout for militants in his home, which stands in the middle of an eight-acre apple orchard.
His hospital medical record reads: “Trauma due to assault by security forces”. His buttocks were swollen and had turned purple. After 10 days of treatment, an acquaintance advised him to leave the hospital so as to avoid being noticed by Criminal Investigation Department personnel. Media reports about alleged torture by Indian forces in Kashmir have been regularly published in local and foreign media during the past 30 years.
People in several other villages have accused the army of conducting “terror raids” during night, detaining and torturing youths and damaging household goods since August 5, when the Indian government divested the restive region of its last shreds of political autonomy. Many people these reporters spoke to in southern areas, where the insurgency has been the most defiant during the past five years, say the raids are aimed at preventing anti-India demonstrations.
“I told them I am scared of both sides. When I got sick of the beating I even told them that yes we are all militants, my father is a militant,” he said. He was released in the evening the next day after medics administered the unknown injection which made the pain go away. He was also given some pills and lotion was applied on his wounds.
Tens of thousands of paramilitary soldiers were sent as reinforcements to supplement more than 40,000 others who were already stationed in Kashmir in the build-up to the scrapping of the special law on August 5. These paramilitary soldiers are in addition to thousands of army soldiers who are permanently stationed in scores of camps across the 40x80 mile Kashmir Valley.
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