Mohammad Jamil
Though India is awash with incidents of rape and murder, but when it comes to Indian Occupied Kashmir, any rape and murder of Muslim girl seems to be continuation of policy of the government to terrorize and traumatize the Kashmiris. Asifa Bano, a nomadic girl, was gang-raped and murdered on January 10, 2017 in District Kathua of Indian Held Kashmir. According to reports, a retired government official and four policemen have been charged over the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Indian Occupied Kashmir. The retired official, Sanji Ram ordered his nephew and a policeman to kidnap the girl, Asifa, in January to terrorise members of her nomadic Bakerwal community to leave Kathua district in the region’s mainly Hindu Jammu division. The girl was heavily sedated, kept in a Hindu temple, and gang-raped by at least three men over the course of four days in mid-January.
She was later strangled and her body was found in the forest near the temple. One of the three suspected rapists was a policeman. Another officer, Anand Dutta, who was initially in charge of the investigation, took more than $6,000 in bribes to cover up the crime. According to the police, Dutta washed the clothes Asifa was wearing at the time of her death to remove any blood or semen stains, they said. He is among a total of eight suspects who have been detained over Asifa’s rape and murder. All eight are Hindu. Several officials of India’s governing Hindu nationalist BJP had also rushed to the suspects’ defence, organising marches against their detention, while lawyers of Jammu’s Bar Association blocked the entrance to a local court to prevent the police from filing charges against the suspects.
Victim’s father Pujwala belongs to a community of Muslim nomadic shepherds called Gujjars who crisscross the Himalayas with their goats and buffaloes. Police have arrested eight men, including a retired government official, four police officers and a juvenile in connection with Asifa’s death. However, the arrests sparked protests in Jammu – lawyers tried to stop police entering the court to file a charge sheet and two ministers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused. The BJP rules the state in a coalition with the regional People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The crime has shocked the community, exposing the fault lines between Hindu-majority Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. The Kashmir valley has a tumultuous relationship with India, and since 1989, people took up the arms in the region against Indian rule.
For the last seven decades, the terrible massacre of Kashmiris in Indian Occupied Kashmir continues unabatedly. The catastrophe is big enough to move any conscious human being; but unfortunately the apathy and insensitivity of international community has encouraged India to perpetrate atrocities on the people of Kashmir in violation of universally accepted human rights. Not that international community is unaware of repression and heinous crimes in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK); it is rather the vested interest of western Governments to remain mute just to appease India. Before Eid or on many other occasions, Indian authorities place all Hurriyet leaders including Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Zafar Akbar Butt and Mukhtar Ahmad Waza under house arrest and in police stations. Even today, the Kashmir is boiling because of the killings of the Kashmiris who are protesting against atrocities committed by the Indian security forces, and also demand the right of self-determination as per UNSC resolutions.
