"A woman doctor emerged from the post-mortem visibly shaken. She beat her forehead, and confirmed gang rape. 'They were like animals', she declared. The charge of gang rape and murder, denied initially even by the Chief Minister, were subsequently confirmed, by Forensic Science Laboratory reports, and a judicial commission of enquiry headed by Justice Jan formed. The commission confirmed that senior police officers had failed shamefully in performing their duties" BAREFOOT Torment in Shopian HARSH MANDER
There were no acts of violence throughout the protest... only a united demand for justice.
 In deep grief: Family members of the two women murdered in Shopian at a press conference in Srinagar. The people of the entire valley of Kashmir today are wracked by the anguish of one man, 28-year-old Shakeel Ahmad. His wife Neelofar Jan, and his teenaged sister Asiya Jan, were found murdered, after violent gang rape, at the outskirts of a small tow n, Shopian, on the morning of May 29, 2009. Shakeel and Neelofar had married just three years earlier. They fell in love when she would walk past his furniture shop on her way to school and college. Both families accepted their marriage just days after they wed. Shakeel doted on his beautiful wife. "I was happy to work hard, only so I could fulfil her every wish." Shakeel had lost his mother when he was barely two years old, and his father when he was still in his teens. His elder brothers and their wives raised him like a son. He resolved that he too would bring up his two younger sisters, one 21 and the other 17, and his 14-year-old brother, as though they were his own children. Neelofar shared fully in caring for his younger siblings. Asiya, his younger teenaged sister, was "always different from the rest". She had topped her class in the high school examinations, and had opted to study to be an engineer, an unusual career choice for women in the valley. Separate lives Shakeel invested in a furniture shop. But Neelofar also wanted to own an apple farm; he saved money and bought a small orchard, just across a shallow stream, Rambi-Ara. In the vicinity of their orchard is a small bridge, adjacent to a paramilitary CRPF camp and a police camp. Further ahead is a military camp of the Rashtriya Rifles. Residents recall that up to the year 2003, grenade attacks, cross firing, searches and, on a couple of occasions, even fidayeen attacks on the camps of the security forces were common in the town. It was rare for anyone to step out after dark. But although the town remained fraught with the highly visible and dense presence of security personnel, tensions eased and civil life became more normalised. However, the security forces and civilians led completely separate lives, and almost never did they encounter each other socially. On May 28, 2009, Shakeel came home from his furniture shop for a late lunch with his wife and two-year-old son, in his usual daily routine, and then returned to his shop. Neelofer waited for Asiya to arrive from school, and they walked to the orchard. When Shakeel returned from his shop at around 7 p.m., he found that his wife and sister had not come back home. He sent his younger brother, but he reported after half an hour that he could not locate them. Shakeel set out on his motor cycle to his orchard. They were not there, and a neighbour testified to him that they had visited the orchard and left a while earlier. Shakeel searched all possible routes to his home, but the young women were nowhere to be found. He then began to panic. He called his older brothers who all joined him to investigate. It was by then dark. They took a solar light from the home, filled petrol in his motorcycle, and continued their desperate search. At around 10 at night, they went to the local police station. A head constable with around eight other men accompanied them in a police van, and they scoured the orchard and the entire area around it with lights until around 2 in the morning. The head constable received a call on his mobile from what sounded from his tone like a superior officer. After that, he called off the search, telling Shakeel that it was pointless to continue in the dark. They would resume the search after daylight. Shakeel could not sleep even a moment in the few hours left of the night. Before dawn, he recited his namaaz prayers, and was outside the police station as soon as it was light. But they did not open the gates. The city stirred, shops began to open. He then spotted a police sub-inspector who drove towards him in his gypsy jeep. "Don't you know?" he asked. "They have found your wife's dead body." Shakeel rushed and found the body face down on the bed of the stream. He confirmed that the body was indeed of Neelofar. Her hands were outstretched, her clothes torn, with scratch marks. Dashed hopes Shakeel was weeping wildly; and his heart lurched in fear for his 17-year-old sister, his precious Asiya. He hoped desperately that she had been spared the same fate as his wife. But before long her body was also found, in another part of the stream bed, her head fractured, her face bloodied, her clothes torn and stained with blood. The bodies of the two young women were at places that they had intensively searched the earlier night. There could be no doubt that the bodies were transported after their search. Cover-up attempts News spread around the town, and by the time the bodies were taken to the district hospital, crowds had gathered outside. They were enraged at the initial version of the Superintendent of Police Javed Mattoo, and the doctors who performed the first post-mortem, that it was a death by drowning (in a stream which even a child could walk through), ignoring and destroying evidence that told another much grimmer story. Shakeel was by now crazed with grief, but the police head thought it fit to walk to him and place his hand on his shoulder with the words, "Don't take it so much to heart. Such things happen from time to time." The crowds were restive, and some began to pelt stones. They carried the two bodies to the office of the Deputy Commissioner, who conceded their demand and ordered a fresh post-mortem by a medical team from another district. A woman doctor emerged from the post-mortem visibly shaken. She beat her forehead, and confirmed gang rape. 'They were like animals', she declared. The charge of gang rape and murder, denied initially even by the Chief Minister, were subsequently confirmed, by Forensic Science Laboratory reports, and a judicial commission of enquiry headed by Justice Jan formed. The commission confirmed that senior police officers had failed shamefully in performing their duties, for which they have been suspended, and the officers were later severely indicted by the High Court. But all of this came to light only because the people of Shopian joined hands for an epic non-violent shut-down, which continued for 47 days. There were no acts of violence throughout the protest, no slogans in support of separatism or any political party, only a united demand for justice. Still at large However, Shakeel and the people of Kashmir are no closer to knowing who raped and killed the women. The circumstantial evidence, especially the cover-up and continuous destruction of evidence, points to members of the security forces. As a report of an International People's Tribunal including Angana Chatterji, Parvez Imroz and Gautam Navlakha put it, the investigations "failed to focus on the identification and prosecution of the perpetrators", and "concentrated instead on locating 'collaborators' and manufacturing scapegoats to subdue public outcry". The most shameful of these were remarks in the Jan Commission report, which contained libellous, outrageous insinuations about the character of the two women who were killed, and of Shakeel. Justice Jan subsequently distanced himself from these comments, blaming the police for insertions, but took no action against them. Shakeel laments that if justice is not done, how will he face his wife and sister when he meets them after he dies. And how will he answer the questions that his son will ask when he grows up. These are questions that each of us will also need to answer to this young boy. With Regards Abi  "My Lord, give me the capability to tolerate an opposing point of view" - Dr. Ali shariati |
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