As India celebrates her 65th republic day families of Wamiq, Muntazir, Sameer and Tufail, end one more day of struggle seeking justice for their loved ones who became victims of an oppressive system. Anando Bhakto and Nazir Ganaie narrate their struggle for justice and the costs of survival in a place where deaths are mere numbers 

Father of slain Tufail Matoo, Mohammad Ashraf  outside his home.
Father of slain Tufail Matoo, Mohammad Ashraf outside his home.

The very first thing we asked Muhammad Ashraf Matoo was what filled him with this mighty, irrepressible urge to write a book. Is this because he wanted to keep Tufail’s memories alive? Unlikely. Since, he is survived by no other child but the memories of this dead one. This memory is too profound and too encompassing. He doesn’t have to make efforts to keep them alive. Is it the belief that a rousing account of the killing will impel the state to deliver justice? Unlikely again. Since when it is a democratic state, justice comes seeking the victim. And when it is not, justice, no matter how persistently you seek it, is at first delayed and then denied. Is it then a latent, vindictive desire for revenge that finds reflection in ink and paper? Certainly, not. Muhammad Ashraf Matoo is too kindly and too humble a man to think of exacting punishment. And now, he is untimely old and feeble. ‘Occupation’ leads its people, almost invariably, to becoming old and feeble. But sometimes, a few men manage to retain some degree of their power. And that encourages them to draw the world in their wake and recount what man can do to man.

“It is everyone’s duty that whatever happens around him, no matter whether he has suffered or benefitted from it immediately, should be preserved as history,” said Muhammad Ashraf. “Also, as citizens our primary responsibility is to showcase the deficiencies of the state apparatus. The future generation of Kashmir should know about the injuries the supervisors of the state have inflicted on us.” A small scale businessman who had lived good many years of his life in Mumbai, Delhi and Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ashraf transformed into an aspiring author after his only son Tufail Mattoo was brutally killed by police on 11 June 2010, 18 days before his eighteenth birthday. Tufail was returning home from tuition when a teargas shell hit him on the head near Gani Memorila Stadium in Rajouri Kadal area of Srinagar, killing him on the spot. Segments of his brain were buried in a nearby graveyard, while his body was taken to Martyrs graveyard, Eidgah.

Ashraf’s next four years were spent in an unavailing pursuit of justice as top-notch authorities of the state tried to force-feed ‘compensation’, while the courts of law, hearing the case at long and short intervals, asked the investigating police team to detect the guilty. But that did not leave him disillusioned. Instead, his interest in philosophy, religion and political thought deepened. “Religion never teaches to kill human beings. It teaches us to be human lovers and respect humanity,” said Ashraf. “Sadly this doesn’t find reflection in Jammu and Kashmir where remorseless killings are orchestrated by the state regime in collaboration with the Indian government.”

Firdousa shows her slain son Wamiq’s medals, certificates and report cards.
Firdousa shows her slain son Wamiq’s medals, certificates and report cards.

Ashraf said he would explain through his book why India is not a democracy. Or, at any rate, why she has failed to extend her democracy to Kashmir. “One of the attributes of a mature democracy is to allow its people to build resistance movements and seek justice. But, look how the state reacted when people took to streets demanding justice for Tufail. In order to save one man, they killed over hundred protesting youths, including children. Our chief minister is a symbol of injustice. Tell me one case where he has delivered justice,” Ashraf asked. ‘Paradise of martyrs’, although Muhammad  Ashraf has not zeroed in on any one title yet, suits the quest of his writing as much it suits the saddening state of affairs in Kashmir where death has sneaked in, in every conceivable way.

There was a mystifying patience, order and calmness in Asfraf’s language and manner which both appealed to us and intrigued us. Importantly, it kept us absorbed. So much that until Ashraf intervalled the conversation to serve us tea, we did not realise it was over an hour already.

Tahira Masood shares that patience, order and calmness. For Tahira and Ashraf both are people who have survived, if not overcome, ‘occupation’. They have not been able to safeguard their loved ones from slaughter. But they have learnt to reconcile to life after their loved ones succumbed to unspeakable brutalities of ‘occupation’.

“Unhone Muntazir ko nahi maara. Hum sabko maar diya (They didn’t kill Muntazir alone. They killed all of us),” Said Tahira, the heaviness in her breath audible as she tried to hide her tears from her ailing parents and younger sister who depend on her for a living. On 6 July 2007, Muntazir Ahmad, son of Mudasir Ahmad and Fayaza Akhtar, had gone for tuitions in a coaching centre located near Nowhatta Police Station. Though there had been reports of stone pelting that day, this Mother Land High School pupil did not want to bunk classes as matriculation examinations were around the corner. Muntazir was rushed to S-K Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar after he was caught in a police crackdown on stone pelters and badly injured. The doctors declared him brought dead. “The police concocted that he was hit by a tear gas shell which they had thrown to disperse crowds. The truth is it was a bullet injury. How and why did they fire at my brother who had never been involved in any anti-state activity or protest rallies?” asked Tahira, the agitating stillness in her eyes communicating her long and irreparable loss.

Ironically, when it comes to human rights violation of Tamil community in Sri Lanka, India has been in the forefront to take on the Lankan authorities. India is among the 25 countries that voted against Sri Lanka at   United Nations’ Human Rights Council session in Geneva on 21 March 2013, pressing resolution for reconciliation and accountability. A year earlier, in April 2012, India sent an all party delegation of Indian parliamentarians to Colombo which recommended meaningful devolution of powers, taking into account the legitimate needs of the Tamil people for equality, dignity, justice and self-respect. In Kashmir, on the other hand, India ignores any such obligation.

Farida Misra, the mother of slain Sameer Rah, has turned weak and  erratic.
Farida Misra, the mother of slain Sameer Rah, has turned weak and erratic.

Tahira, a BBA graduate who had been selected for an MBA programme, gave up studies to look after the family after Mudasir, an autorickshaw driver, was unable to continue working following cataract operation in his eyes. Currently, she is in a private job in an Insurance company to eke out a living. Tahira said she applied for ex-gratia relief under the SRO scheme of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir soon after her brother’s demise. But Ali Muhammad Sagar, JK’s Parliamentary and Panchayti Raj Minister, who had highlighted Muntazir’s case while in opposition, made no intervention to help her secure compensation. “When they are in opposition they accommodate us but when they come to power they show no compassion. The separatist leaders are the same. They raise issues to keep themselves in news. Sometimes I feel militancy was a better option. The combatants and the security forces fought it out in the battlefield. The collateral damage was not this grave,” said Tahira, who has lost count of the number of times she went to the state secretariat to plead her case. Significantly, when we called at Ali Muhammad Sagar, he was quick to promise immediate help to Muntazir’s family. “Ask them to visit me tomorrow. I will see whatever could be done to help them,” he assured us. But when Tahira did visit him the following day, the minister asked her to come back next week.

Muntazir’s another sister Iram Masood too had to discontinue studies. “Our mother could not bear the loss of Muntazir. She went into depression ever since. She has been on medication and sedative drugs for the past six years now. Iram has to be always present by her side to look after her. How can she study?” Tahira told us.

Hopeful that an intervention by the media might help her plea for government relief, Tahira quickly took out a neatly arranged cluster of files. Barely 25, she told us about the various schemes for ex gratia and other provisions for relief with mastered accuracy. And that is a craft off-shooting from repression, it seems.

Firdousa Farooq too acquired it after her son Wamiq was killed by police on 31 January 2010. A seventh standard student, he was hit on the head by a tear gas shell near Gani Memorial Stadium, Rajouri Kadal. Four years down the line, Firdousa can recount in one breath the FIR numbers, the current position of her case in Srinagar’s Lower Court and the various sections of the law under which the guilty could be convicted. But will the guilty ever be convicted? “Court bhi inka, judge bhi inka (the courts are sham, the judges are puppets),” she told us mutinously. But that doesn’t stop her from fighting for justice. From a humble homemaker, she has become socially more active and politically much aware. She believes if the voices of dissent could be channeled with determination, a New Delhi like change could happen, where a common man’s anti-corruption movement ousted the Congress party from power.

“It is economically unsustainable for us to be present for the court hearings. My husband is a hawker in Lal Chowk. The days we go for hearing, there is no earning. We have been attending the court proceedings for three years now, nevertheless,” she said. “We have to show to people across India how we are suffering. We have to tell them how we are killed, maimed, silenced.” Perhaps it is this resolution that has driven aggrieved people such as Firdousa and Ashraf to form a committee called Thahfuz-e-Hukuk-e-Islami, through which they raise the issues of police atrocity and press for conviction of erring police officials.

Fayaza Akhter and Mudasir Ahmad, waiting to see their son Muntazir Ahmad’s killers brought to justice.
Fayaza Akhter and Mudasir Ahmad, waiting to see their son Muntazir Ahmad’s killers brought to justice.

But not everybody has been able to battle the odds courageously. Farida Mishra, the mother of slain Sameer Rah, has turned weak and erratic ever since her eight-year-old son was killed by paramilitary forces. His fault was he had shouted a few impulsive slogans for Kashmir’s ‘azadi’. The paramilitary forces beat him up with bamboo sticks, struck him on the head and threw him into a clump of ivy bushes. “We had returned from the burial of a relative when a crowd gathered at our place, crying out loudly that a small child had been killed. We did not realsie it was Sameer, who had gone out to buy candy. The candy was still in his mouth when he was buried later that day. We served water to the frenzied men and women, and told them not to panic. Everything would be okay,” Farida recalled. Life was never again okay for her, however. “Her feet have become very weak, she cannot move out of the house too often. We took her to Dr Razdan, a neurologist. But it seems the problem is in her mind. She keeps brooding all the time,” narrated Farida’s sister-in-law who drops in often to look after Sameer’s surviving siblings, Sarfaraz, a 12th standard student in Bal Garden Higher Secondary School, and Yasmeen who is in first year in government college. Though Faiz Ahmad Rah, Sameer’s father, accepted compensation offered by government, the family believes compensation can never be justice. “This certainly is not justice. They got us onto the compromising table and offered us money. My husband is a petty fruit vendor. What could we possibly do than accept compensation?” regretted Farida.

Like Farida, Tahira too is not fighting any case in the court to trace out or punish Muntazir’s killer. But her arguments are different. “The judiciary is totally corrupt. We do not believe in the system. We know the system will never trace out or punish the killer. Since the killer is one amongst them.” There are ample rooms to believe her. Ashraf’s experiences in the court add to them. “We were made to wait for four-four hours during hearings. The statement of the police changed everyday. Sometimes they would say the CRPF was responsible for the killing, sometimes they would say they do not possess tear gas shells at the first place. They never came to court fully prepared. Isn’t that contempt of court?” said Ashraf. In 2011 he approached the Srinagar High Court, hoping falsely the judges there would speed up proceedings. “In one such proceeding a police constable in civil uniform came with the copy of investigation report. The Hon’ble Assistant Attorney General of Srinagar High Court too was shocked. He asked the constable where the officers were. Who would explain the report?” he added.

Funeral  procession of 8 year old Sameer Ahmad Rah who was killed by paramilitary forces in 2010.
Funeral procession of 8 year old Sameer Ahmad Rah who was killed by paramilitary forces in 2010.
Pic: Bilal Bahadur

Even though an eye witness had recognized one Javed as Tufail’s killer during an identification parade in 2010 in Rainawari Police Station, the police told court that Javed was a tailor master and he was not on duty when Tufail was killed on 11 June 2010. The police later filed a closure report stating the accused could not be identified. “The closure report is biased, maligned and fabricated. If the police can trace stone pelters from a crowd of thousands, why can’t they trace my son’s killer? It is an elephant hiding in a heap of grass,” said Ashraf, his face and voice showing the scorn he felt for the system.

Between 2 July 2013 and 8 July 2013, Justice Virendra Singh of Srinagar High Court examined the merits of the closure report. The judgment remains preserved till date. The State Human Rights Commission too has not disclosed its report so far. When Ashraf filed an RTI application seeking to know the commission’s report, his plea was rejected on grounds that the court has asked to maintain secrecy of the report. “Why have they prepared a report then? To gather dust?” he asked.

Firdousa’s experience with the court was no less appalling. Although Chief Judicial Magistrate of Srinagar Rajeev Gupta issued non-bailable arrest warrants against two police persons, ASI Abdul Khaliq and SPO Muhammad Akram, they are yet to be taken to custody. “This is the very police state we talk about in Kashmir. That is why we pelt stones. We do not pelt stones for jobs or education or electricity. We pelt stones because there is no rule of law in Kashmir,” she opined. At one point she was filled with so much horror at the sight of handcuffed children being produced in court that she told the judge she was contemplating suicide. To her amazement the judge encouraged her.

Surely that was an overwhelming disregard for the law. It was also an overwhelming disregard for the values of humanity. But such disregard has been common to the people of Kashmir ever since Maharaja Hari Singh signed the treaty of accession with India on 26 October 1947. India taking advantage of tribal raid, according to a noted author and Marxist historian, Perry Anderson, forged a declaration of accession to occupy Kashmir. The document of accession is stated to be brought to Delhi by Krishna Menon from Srinagar, when in fact he was still in Delhi. For past 66 years India has failed to produce the document on which Indian state bases its entire claim on Kashmir. Anderson says it is now over 60 years that India seized the larger part of Kashmir, without the title from colonial power, through a forged document of accession from Maharaja Hari Singh, with an accent of its leading politician, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, and with a promise of a plebiscite to confirm the will of its people. After securing the region, Nehru – the prime minister of India – made short work of all three by deposing the Maharaja, ditching promise of a referendum and by arresting Sheikh Abdullah, the lion of Kashmir and then prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 1953 on charges of sedition. Nehru in his lifetime was able to secure Kashmir as an ‘integral part’ of the Indian nation. But in order to secure this, he compromised with the scope for free and fair elections, the scope for resistance, the scope for free speech. Perhaps, without once realising that by denying free and fair elections, by denying an environment for resistance, by denying right to free speech, he had rendered the very idea of Indian nation miserably incompatible to the people of Kashmir.

In the last 24 years of resistance to Indian rule, over 70,000 Kashmiris have lost their lives. The worst of the violence is over, arguably. Yet there is no attempt by the state to heal the wounds of violence. According to an article published in International Journal of Health Sciences in July 2009, there has been a phenomenal increase in psychiatric morbidity among Kashmiris. The article titled ‘Life in Conflict – Characteristics of Depression in Kashmir’ used CES-D scale (Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression) to measure symptom of depression in non-combatant civilian population. The survey revealed the prevalence of depression was 55.72 per cent overall. It was the highest (66.67 per cent) in the 15 to 25 years age group. One common depression syndrome reported was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), in which a victim lives his trauma time and again. Perhaps that explains why Azam Farooq remembers his older brother Wamiq perfectly, even though he was barely two-and-a-half year old when the latter was killed in 2010. “Probably he keeps recalling that fateful day in his mind. He remembers everything about Wamiq, he remembers everything which happened that day. There is a great anger simmering inside him,” said Firdousa. The anger often reflects in his actions and words, too. When we asked him whose toy it was, pointing to a make-believe gun, Azam quickly held it against his bosom and said: “I will kill the authorities with this.” Firdousa herself has not been able to forget Wamiq. Perhaps she too relives her trauma every now and then. When she littered the floor with Wamiq’s medals, certificates and report cards in no time, we noticed there was not a hint of dust in the school bag, or the folders. It was not difficult to imagine she must be taking them out every day and cleaning them.

Muntazir Ahmad (encircled) in this class group photograph.
Muntazir Ahmad (encircled) in this class group photograph.

Firdousa surely knows memories are like illusory joy to our mind that wants to be consoled. They absorb us for some time but they cannot recreate a past that is tattered. Much like leaves of the chinar trees littered in autumn. No matter how brilliant or varied their hue, they have to rust and disappear. Fayaza knows this too. But that doesn’t stop her from talking about Muntazir. “In 2005 there was a fire accident in the house. We suffered loss of property. Muntazir, though very young then, worked as a salesman to add to the family income. On Eid, I gave him some money to buy new clothes for himself. But he used that money to buy more grocery items for us,” she recalled.

Even in this loss of hope, Fayaza has retained her ability to be hospitable to others. She refilled our cups of tea warmly and generously, even though we protested we had had enough. And as we sipped the beverage beside her, she gazed at us with gentle, wistful smile. As if it was not us. As if it was her son Muntazir. The very next moment she was crying relentlessly. Her husband cried too. But not Tahira. She has been destined to play the role of a man. For, she has been sunk in integrally to the Indian nation.

India is not responsive to her yowls for justice. India is not pained to see Ashraf’s only son resting in two different graves in two different corners of Srinagar. India is not moved by thousands of Kashmiri men dying too early and too brutally. And yet, as India celebrates her 65th Republic Day tomorrow, she would expect Tahira and Fayaza and Farida and Firdousa and all others to identify with her tricolor, rise up to her anthem, and repeat joyfully the words of her preamble, “We, the people of India.”

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