HVK Archives: Vicious ultras ravage women in J&k
Vicious ultras ravage women in J&k - Blitz
Suresh Dugger
()
28-Jan Dec 3
Title : Vicious ultras ravage women in J&K
Author : Suresh Dugger
Publication : Blitz
Date : Dec 28-Jan 3, 1997
It is probably the most chilling of the statistics that reveal the casual
viciousness militancy has brought on Kashmir: in the seven years since
separatism became a credo in the Valley, nearly 500 women have been abducted,
raped and killed by so-called freedom fighters or foreign mercenaries.
Mainly Muslims, these women have been soft targets for sex-starved terrorists
whose word was law before the state's recent return to democratic rule.
And among the countless stories of tragedy and suffering that have scarred
Kashamir's soul in the long night of militancy, Nighat Parveen's is a
particularly poignant one.
Nighat was a child of four when she was abducted by ultras looking to settle
scores with her family. Nighat went missing for five years before a lucky
coincidence reunited her with the family she was torn from.
Her father Wali Mohammed Wani moved heaven and earth for some news, any news,
of the daughter who was snatched away from the family by Kashmiri militants
in 1991.
Wani, a resident of Hail Jagir in the Valley's Baramulla district, had given
up hopes of ever seeing Nighat again. But late last September, his prayers
were answered when he least expected it.
Visiting his ancestral village of Kreeri Pattan, Wani chanced upon a vaguely
familiar figure at a public gathering. It was Nighat, five years older, her
innocence destroyed by the ravages of a destiny she could scarcely
comprehend.
Now nine years old, Nighat had been away from her family so long she could
not recognise even her own father. But Wani had no doubts.
Nighat had been rescued from her captors by some youths who had given up the
path of militancy. It needed some effort by her parents and other relatives
to revive her childhood memories.
Nighat's is no isolated case. Women have been the forgotten victims of the
conflict that has raged in Kashmir for the past seven years.
Around the time when Nighat's ordeal ended, three women similarly abducted by
militants were rescued from the abandoned house or an ousted Kashmiri Pandit
family at Ikhrajpur in Srinagar.
They had been held for ransom by a militant group when a security forces raid
sprung them from misery.
But these are but the lucky few who managed to escape from the clutches of
their tormentors. Hundreas or young women kidnapped over the past six years
have not been so lucky.
Most of them are subjected to brutal rape and worse. Branded mukhbirs
(informers) by merciless militants, they often end up dead, but only after
they have been sexually abused for as long as it suits the militants' fancy.
Some of these unfortunates became pregnant and some are forced into wedlock.
These weddings have come to be known as 'command marriages'.
Frequently, threatened parents fearing the wrath of militants pack off their
young daughters from Kashmir to save them from 'command marriages' to
gun-wielding crazies masquerading as militants.
A well-known Kashmiri doctor sent his well-educated daughter to a distant
city after a former domestic cook of his demanded that she be married to him
because he was a mujahid. He had lately returned after receiving arms
training in Pakistan.
In another instance, a college girl fled to Jammu to escape an impending
'command marriage' to a militant twice her age and already a married man with
three children.
In a village in Sonawari tehsil a gun-toting militant sauntered into a house,
mullah in tow, and forcibly married a college-going girl. The hapless girl
could resume her studies when he was killed in an encounter with the police.
There are scores of girls who are abducted by militants and then simply
disappear. The skeleton of one such girl was recovered two years after her
abduction from the house of a migrant Pandit in Srinagar's Chhota Bazar area.
Atrocities on women have been among the more gruesome features of armed
insurgency in Kashmir, and has been one of the main reasons for the
disillusionment of ordinary Kashmiri Muslims with the cult of the gun.
Foreign mercenaries operating in Kashmir are always in search of pleasure of
the flesh, and this has added a new dimension to the sexual exploitation of
women. They force local men, especially the Gujjars in the hilly areas, to
divorce their young wives.
Then the mercenaries enter into a mutah (temporary marriage) with these
divorced but unwilling women. In many cases, locals offer their daughters to
the mercenaries.
In Kuthal, a village in Doda district, security forces, during a raid on a
hideout of foreign mercenaries, found four young Gujjar women whose husbands
had been forced to divorce them and who were taken as wives by the
mercenaries. One of them said she had to satisfy the lust of several other
mercenaries. The four rescued women were Taj Begum, Noor Begum, Rah Bibi and
Zooni Bibi.
The mother of Shakeela, a boat-dweller of Zero Bridge in Srinagar, was left
to cry over her daughter's charred corpse.
The body of TV and stage artist Shamima Akhtar was recovered three days after
she was abducted. She had been raped repeatedly. Nighat Rasool of Bandipora
was kidnapped and brought to Srinagar, confined to a deserted house,
gangraped for several weeks, then killed after she had been tonsured. Her
corpse was picked up from the Hawal Chowk intersection in Srinagar.
Atiqa of Sopore, Zubaida of Nadhial, Sarsha of Bandipore, Dilshada (an 8th
standard student) of Arigam, Bandipore, Misri of Kunanan, Babagund ... the
list of women victims of militancy is inexhaustible.
The militants themselves make no bones of their vicious deeds. Arrested
Afghan mercenary Jamal-u-Din boasted to the media that while he was operating
in Anantnag district, he sexually exploited nearly 30 women.
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