Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Torture victim reveals plight of Kashmiri inmates

Courtesy: Daily Rising Kashmir dt April 28th, 2009 by Showkat Nanda
Baramulla, April 27: Peer Mehraj-u-din is yet to recover from the mental torture at the hands of his interrogators who had even prodded him to confess to plan of killing BJP leaders, L K Advani and Narendra Modi in a bid to frame him on false charges. Resident of Baramulla district’s Mukam, Potukhah area, Mehraj-u-din had gone to Mumbai in 2002 to apply for MBA course in Rizwi College, Bandra when at the Mumbai Railway station he was picked up by some unidentified men in civvies.“They asked about my identification, and when I resisted and asked them to identify themselves, they were infuriated. They dragged and bundled me in a vehicle and I found myself in a room with four other young men,” Mehraj recalls, adding, “Three days had passed and I was in Delhi, which I didn’t know then.”Mehraj recalls how he and the other boys were interrogated in the same room for hours together.“Every question was followed by punches and blows. All of us were hanged upside down and they urinated on our faces,” he said.He also revealed how his two fellow inmates were killed in a “fake encounter.” “In the dead of the night, we were taken in a cab to a lonely place where two of the boys were shot dead and we were asked to run. As soon as we started running, our captors shouted at us drawing the attention of nearby people,” recalls Mehraj, adding that they shouted, “We have killed two and arrested three.”“The people also started calling us terrorists and beat us with stones after the policemen presented it as a genuine encounter,” Mehraj said.Later, Mehraj was asked to sign some blank papers.“They told me to confess before media that I had plans to kill Advani and Modi,” he said.Mehraj was accused of possessing explosive material which he denies even today. After being convicted under POTA, he was shifted to Tihar jail where he was kept for more than four years. He says he was subjected to third degree torture for months together.“For the first few days I would be regularly stripped naked and beaten. They would give me electric shocks almost daily. An officer known as Roy Singh would urinate on my face,” recalls Mehraj amid sobs, adding that he filed a writ petition (381/2005) against Singh and other jail authorities later.He added that he was not the only victim, but all the Kashmiri inmates would undergo severe mental torture.“Apart from being abused, we were forced to do Puja every morning. Even copies of Holy Quran would be trampled under the feet before our eyes.”Like Mehraj, hundreds of Kashmiris have been falsely implicated and subjected to third degree torture, asserts Abdul Qadeer Dar, Chairman of People's Right's Movement (PRM), an organisation fighting for the rights of released militants."Mehraj is one among hundreds who were treated inhumanly in Tihar jail. There are more than 60,000 people, some of whom are working as PRM volunteers now, have been severely tortured,” Dar said, adding, “There is an immediate need to start a vigorous campaign against this state-sponsored evil.”

3 comments:

  1. The state is a blind and dumb collective and the executive personnel of the state police and military are tremendously loner and hence had ceased to have a feeling as a normal human being.The training as well as their lifestyle speaks of their attitude towards life.
    These are the degenerated human resource of our country that needs re-humanisation

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  2. Satte should take accoutability of all citizen at all concent. No body is above law and order, not even the armed force.

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  3. After Wikileaks of ICRC reports. Kashmiris should insist on full ICRC reports and then take their case to International Criminal Court. India used Torture as a State Policy is serious charge and ICC should probe it.

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