Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir: “It has been approximately two weeks, and I fear that as time progresses, this case will receive less attention, and no concrete actions will be taken by the army.”
As he talked, dressed in a green sweater over a traditional Kashmiri kurta pajama, Wali Mohammed, 55, a farmer from Topa Peer village of Poonch district in southern Jammu region, supported himself with a stick due to a cripped knee that’s been operated on.
He could barely speak. His eyes remained fixed on the mountainous path where he last saw his son.
Topa Peer is a small, battered-looking hamlet of 50 concrete and mud houses. A 10-km drive on a muddy road from the market of a village called Bufliaz suddenly stops in the middle of a dense forest. From here a 3-km trek uphill leads to Topa Peer.
The villagers are Gujjars-Bakarwals, the third-largest ethnic community in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), either nomadic or settled herders of sheep and cattle, long-time supporters of the Indian army, which they helped in pushing back militancy from the Jammu region in the 1990s.
Topa Peer is a poor village, water drums lined up early in the morning at the only water source, a government-installed pipe without a tap. Before being asked, a young boy swiftly pointed to the three houses of three civilians allegedly killed by the army in December 2023.
After a deadly ambush that claimed the lives of four soldiers on 21 December 2023, soldiers of the 48 Rashtriya Rifles picked up Mohammad’s son, Shabir Ahmed, 30, and nine other civilians on 22 December 2023, and allegedly tortured them.
Of the nine, Ahmed and two others—Safeer Hussain, 45, and Mohammad Showkat, 26—died. The post-mortem report has not yet been made public.
Before their deaths, the villagers did not believe the army could ever harm them.
“We have always stood by the army and India,” said Wali Mohammad. “We never supported militancy. But this is the price we paid.”
“Look at the dead body of my son,” said Wali Mohammad, displaying a photo of Ahmed’s dead body with cuts on his left leg, burns on arms and blackened back from severe beating. “See the torture marks,”
The incident came to light after a viral video revealed men in uniform sprinkling chili powder on the private parts of agonised civilians.
“Yes, I am in the video,” Mohammad Ashraf (52), one among the nine civilians, was quoted as telling the Indian Express.
As outrage and criticism spread, the army and the civil administration rushed to the village and tried to calm the people of Topa Peer. The army “attached”—or removed from posts and sent to headquarters—three officers, including a brigadier, colonel and lieutenant colonel. The battalion concerned was moved out on 12 January 2023.
Four days after the killing, army chief Gen Manoj Pande, according to a 25 December 2023 statement, told commanders in Poonch to “conduct the operations (sic) in the most professional manner…”
On 15 January 2024 on army day, Gen Pande said, “My guidance to soldiers is unambiguous in respect for human rights and zero tolerance for any action on that account. There are laid-down guidelines on what to do and what not to do in those areas, and for soldiers to be able to act in a professional manner in what they are doing.”
The J&K government announced compensation of Rs 20 lakh to each family and promised jobs and a plot of land in Poonch. The army announced compensation of Rs 10 lakh each to the next of kin of the three families and “adopted” the village under its ‘Operation Sadbhavana’, launched 26 years ago to build infrastructure for villages in insurgency hit areas.
Yet, the families told us they had few expectations that justice would be served, a feeling driven by the union government’s past record of not allowing prosecution of soldiers involved in hundreds of similar killings or outrages over three decades of unrest and insurgency in J&K.
That feeling was echoed when Article 14 revisited two families whose kin were allegedly killed by the Army in fake encounters in 2010, 2016 and 2020. Some did not pursue the case after getting government jobs, others felt too scared to do so.
'We Have Lost Hope'
Wali Mohammed told Article 14 in Topa Peer that the compensation and jobs offered by the military and civil administration meant nothing and that their “wounds” could not be addressed by compensation.
"We have lost hope,” said Mohammed Razaq, brother of Mohammed Showkat, another of the men who died in army custody. “It's all a sham”.
More than a month after the killings, the families had not approached a court or the police. Neither had they filed a first information report (FIR) with the local police nor did they intend to, they said. One reason is that they were aware that the police had no jurisdiction over alleged violence inflicted by the army.
"They (army) just wanted to buy some time for things to cool down,” said Razaq. “That's why they ordered the transfer of the officers."
Little has changed over the years. The feelings expressed by the families of the dead men in Topa Peer were similar to those expressed by 58 families, interviewed by Amnesty International India in 2013. These families said they had little or no faith that soldiers and other security forces responsible for human rights violations would face justice.
No member of the armed forces in J&K can be prosecuted in civilian courts without union government sanction. Court martials do not require such sanction, and while there have been court martials that have indicted officers, armed forces tribunals have often overturned such indictments (here and here).
Ever since an armed insurgency broke out in the region in the early 1990s, thousands of civilians were taken from their homes and allegedly killed by both State and non-state actors (here, here and here). Hundreds of families remain uncertain if loved ones are alive or dead.
Many families whose relatives fell victim to staged encounters have grown disillusioned with State investigations. Even mainstream political parties now emphasise compensation to families of those killed in such encounters instead of criminal investigations and judicial oversight.
Human-rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have said (here and here) that the union government has never sanctioned prosecution of security forces in three decades of conflict.
According to Amnesty International’s 2015 report “DENIED”, there were more than 800 cases of torture and death in the custody of army and other security forces in the 1990s, and hundreds of other cases of extrajudicial executions and “enforced disappearances” between 1989 to 2013.
Between 2001 and 2009, only four officers were subject to a court-martial, said a 2015 report by The International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir and The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).
Only two of these cases dealt with potential human-rights violations. In one, a major was found guilty after a court martial and dismissed from service for rape, while another major was acquitted in a murder case.
In January 2018, the government admitted in Parliament that, since 2001, the union government had denied permission to prosecute armed forces personnel under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1990.
‘We Have Let It Go’
Consider the case of Shabir Ahmad Mungoo, 30, a college lecturer allegedly picked-up by the army from his home in south Kashmir’s Pulwama in 2016 and then beaten to death in custody, according to his family.
A J&K police probe found 23 army men involved in Shabir’s killing and sought union government sanction in 2018 for their prosecution. None of them ever was.
On 17 August 2016, Shabir Ahmad, a resident of Shar-e-Shali village in the Khrew area of south Kashmir's Pulwama district, had just finished his dinner around 10:30 pm when soldiers barged into his house and dragged him and his brother Zahoor Ahmad outside.
"They started beating him (Shabir) ruthlessly and then took him away," said 58-year old Wali Mohammed Mungoo, father of Shabir Ahmad and a cleric in a local mosque. "Zahoor was spared.”
More than seven years after Shabir Ahmad was killed, the family has heard nothing of the investigation promised by the army. They did not go to the police or a court.
"We have let it go," said Wali Mohammed.
Shabir Ahmad, a temporary lecturer at a college in south Kashmir's Khrew, is survived by an 8-year-old son, wife, and parents. That year, over 120 civilians, mostly young men protesting the killing of top militant commander Burhan Wani, were shot by security forces.
Wani, a popular, 21-year-old militant commander of the militant group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, was killed by security forces on 8 July 2016, in southern Kashmir.
"Some protesters had pelted stones on an Army vehicle near our village and in a fit of rage, they beat many villagers, including my two sons," Mungoo said.
On the next day, the Mungoo family received the dead body of their elder son Shabir Ahmad, while Zahoor was beaten but alive.
"Shabir’s dead body bore torture marks," recalled his father.
Shabir’s killing, after army torture, the family alleged, led to an uproar in the erstwhile state, one of the strongest protests in three decades of conflict.
The Army's Chinar Corps commander, lieutenant general Satish K Dua, termed Shabir Ahmed’s death "regrettable" and ordered a probe.
"The army will investigate the matter," Dua told reporters in Srinagar in August 2016.
The police registered a first information report (FIR) against “unknown” security forces personnel.
"We no longer fight the case. Except once, we weren't even called for investigation. We don't even know who our lawyer is," said Yasmeena Jan, Shabir Ahmad’s wife. “It has been so many years, we have lost hope. I don't even know in which court the case is."
‘AFSPA Comes To The Rescue’
Over the years, various international and national human rights groups have criticised successive Indian governments for “misusing” the AFSPA in J&K and other “disturbed areas”, which currently include Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 31 October 2019 discarded hundreds of laws that applied to the former state alone, but among the handful of laws it retained was the AFSPA and the Public Safety Act, 1990, which allows detentions for up to two years without a lawyer or trial.
Under the AFSPA, the army has the authority to detain individuals without a warrant and to enter or search premises without a warrant if there are suspicions about the person involved. However, the army must hand over suspects to a local police station within 24 hours in “good physical condition”.
“Any person arrested and taken into custody under this Act and every property, arms, ammunition or explosive substance or any vehicle or vessel seized under this Act,” says the AFSPA, “shall be made over to the officer-in-charge of the nearest police station with the least possible delay, together with a report of the circumstances occasioning the arrest, or as the case may be, occasioning the seizure of such property, arms, ammunition or explosive substance or any vehicle or vessel, as the case may be.”
Rebecca Mammen John, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India, told Article 14 that it was a long-standing demand of many criminal lawyers and human rights activists that AFSPA should not be used in a democratic country.
“AFSPA precisely protects these kinds of offenders and because of AFSPA, you are not able to give justice to innocent people,” she said.
Any crime, said John, should be regarded as such and prosecuted under criminal law, and protections given to armed forces in conflict zones should not “make a mockery of the law”.
“Ordinarily, if an ordinary person or an ordinary police officer in Delhi or Mumbai was accused in the same crime, where innocent people are killed in custody, then the law has to take its course,” said John.
Aakar Patel, chairman of Amnesty International argued that a key provision of AFSPA is the “sweeping empowerment” of individuals from the police and the military and the paramilitary to open fire “if he is of opinion that it is necessary to do so for the maintenance of public order”.
“The forces could use force ‘even to the causing of death’ and would be immune from prosecution for their actions except with the sanction of the Centre,” said Patel.
There is a safeguard in the form of the AFSPA’s section 7, under which immunity can be lifted to allow prosecution in a civilian court. However, as the government informed the Rajya Sabha on 1 January 2018, this has never happened.
“Military trials, called courts martial, are used to try soldiers, but the record here of the army has been poor, as the instances in Machil and Pathribal show,” said Patel.
On 25 March 2000, soldiers killed five civilians in a staged gunfight in forests of Pathribal in Anantnag. The army claimed that those killed were Pakistani militants responsible for the Chittisinghpora massacre, where 36 Sikh men were shot on 20 March 2000.
Forensic tests revealed the five men were not militants but missing civilians. In March 2012, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said soldiers had fabricated and destroyed evidence.
On 14 January 2014, the army closed the case citing “lack of evidence” against the accused, a finding upheld by the High Court of J&K and Ladkah. In July 2016 the families of the murdered men challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court.
In August 2017, the Supreme Court accepted the plea, issuing notices to the union government, the J&K government, the army, and CBI, with a six-week deadline to respond. Since then, the case has not been heard in the Supreme Court, according to the lawyers of the victims.
Patel said that to ensure a fair trial, a court must be competent, which means judges must possess legal training and qualifications; be independent, meaning appointment, promotion and job security of judges; be free of executive influence; and be impartial of personal and institutional bias.
“On all these counts, the Indian military justice system is deficient,” said Patel. “It discounts legal training and qualifications, lacks independence from the military chain of command, and ignores conflicts of interest.”
A military court is not a permanent body like a regular court. It involves a trial by a temporary jury of soldiers convened by a senior officer, as this Article 14 graphic explains.
The Army dismisses most of the allegations of human rights violations it receives. It is hard to say why because the Army usually doesn’t reveal case information.
In some cases, military courts have convicted soldiers, only for the judgements to be undone, as we said earlier, by an appeals tribunal.
'No One Has Been Prosecuted'
Firdous Ahmad Lone still vividly remembers 2 April 2010, when his elder brother, Riyaz Ahmed, 20, told the family that he was going to north Kashmir’s Kupwara, 85 km northwest of Srinagar, to work with the Army as a porter, hoping to earn Rs 1,000 per day.
On the first day of the job, he and two others returned home, but on the second day, they did not, Lone said.
"It was actually our neighbor through which the Army lured our brother to Kupwara." Lone told Article 14.
Ahmad, a watchman at a car workshop, along with Shazad Khan, 27, and Shafi Lone,19, of Nadihal village in Rafiabad, Baramulla were taken to an army camp, where they were subsequently shot in an alleged staged encounter on 30 April 2010, at Sona Pindi in Machil sector on the Line of Control.
It was through the newspapers that the families of the deceased came to know about the killing of their kin.
"After 27 days, we learned about their killings. We retrieved their bodies from Kalaroos, Kupwara," Lone said. "They had been severely beaten and battered."
He said that the civilians were falsely labeled as Pakistani militants, and items such as Pakistani weapons, Pakistani sweets, Pakistani currency, and Pakistani clothes were planted on them, falsely claiming they were crossing the border and were killed in an encounter.
The staged encounter sparked widespread protests in north Kashmir, spreading across the Valley, which shut down for five months, as over 100 youth were killed and thousands injured by security forces.
"Their killers were rewarded with promotions, achieving ranks,” said Lone. “Their actions were driven by greed.”
Indeed, an army general court of inquiry, which conducts a preliminary investigation, said cash rewards were motivations, as it found five of its personnel, including a colonel and a captain, guilty of staging the gunfight, killing the three young men and falsely accusing them of being foreign militants.
They were convicted during a court martial in 2014 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
However, three years after the sentence, on 27 July 2017, an Armed Forces Tribunal suspended the life sentences of five soldiers. It was not clear why.
"Initially, we were satisfied with the sentence, but then the army court suspended their sentence and set them free,” said Lone. “We were numb and couldn't muster the courage to say anything.”
In 2019, the J&K government provided jobs to all three families under the Compassionate Appointment Rules 1994.
"With this (jobs), the case also died," Lone said. "We sometimes attend court hearing, as three civilians were also arrested in the case,"
The civilians accused in the killings remain incarcerated because they were tried in a civilian court; the soldiers involved have been released because they faced their own military court, said Lone.
"Even though we know they won't be prosecuted, we still remain hopeful,” said Lone. “The wounds inflicted upon us can never fully heal.”
Like Lone, others who have lost family to army action, said they did not believe those in Poonch should expect more than an apology.
‘Senseless Killings Won’t Stop’
On 18 July 2020, security forces in Kashmir claimed to have killed three militants in an encounter in Amshipora village in south Kashmir’s Shopian district. Almost three weeks later, three families from the Rajouri district of Jammu division filed a missing persons report with the J&K police.
In August 2020, photographs of the three slain men from the Amshipora encounter went viral on social media. The families that had filed missing persons reports claimed that the slain youths were their kin. Their boys had gone to Shopian to work as laborers and had no connections with militants, the families said.
In September 2020, the army identified the three dead men in Amshipora as 25-year-old Mohammed Ibrar, 20-year-old Imtiyaz Ahmad, and 16-year-old Ibrar Ahmad, the missing youths from Rajouri. In December, the Jammu and Kashmir police filed a chargesheet against a captain of the Indian Army and two local informers for abducting and murdering the three workers.
Three years later, in March 2023, an army court sentenced the accused involved in the Amshipora fake encounter to life imprisonment.
“When the army captain involved in my son's death was sentenced to life imprisonment, my heart found some solace,” said 65-year-old Mohammed Yousuf, father of 25-year-old Ibrar Ahmed, one of the three civilians killed in the Amshipora murders.
Within eight months of the sentence, an Armed Forces Tribunal suspended it and granted bail to the captain. “The accused captain admitted in front of his fellow soldiers that he killed the children, received a life imprisonment sentence, and yet he was granted bail,” Yousuf said.
The Army's actions in Poonch now seem futile, merely done to keep people hoping, he argued.
“So, whether it's my son or those killed in Poonch, such senseless killings won't stop,” he said. “More children will continue to die because those responsible for the killings will never face consequences.”
Mohammed Yousuf isn’t the only one who believes that the victims of the army’s human rights violations in Jammu & Kashmir can ever get justice. Bagga Khan, the father of Ibrar Ahmed, the youngest of the three men murdered in Amshipora, said he regarded army investigations as a “cover-up”, and said no justice would be delivered to the families of those killed in extrajudicial killings involving the army.
“Our last pillar of hope was the life sentence for the accused captain, but the army shattered it again when he was set free,” said Khan. “The life sentence was meant to be justice for our innocent son, but once again, the army broke our back.”
Khan said families who lost kin in army killing would only find justice if those soldier accused were given “severe punishments”, such as life imprisonment or hanging.. “But that's not happening,” said Khan, “Here, the army takes a life, apologies, and considers the case closed.”
“Is that justice?” asked Khan, saying he feared the same would happen with the families of those who were killed in Poonch.
“The inquiry in my son's case took almost four years, and what came of it?” said Khan. “The same army that killed my son was investigating their own officer.”
Violence Down But Killings Continue
Not much has changed by way of justice since the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, with the former state witnessing two fake encounters and a couple of controversial ones (here and here ).
Regional political parties said BJP claims justifying the end of J&K’s special status, arguing that it had brought peace and ended violence in the Valley made little sense, as both civilians and soldiers had died since.
Violence is down, with home minister Amit Shah saying in Parliament that “incidents” had fallen from 7,217 incidents in 2004-2014 to 2,197 in 2014-2023. Regional political parties in Kashmir attribute this decline largely to a security crackdown, the imprisonment of hundreds if not thousands under the PSA and other laws and other punitive measures, such as raids and the seizure of property.
“We do not see peace anywhere,” said Najmu Saqib, spokesperson of the People’s Democratic Party, a BJP partner in government for over three years before the relationship ended in 2018. “The way militants are operating in Jammu region, this wasn’t there even during the peak of militancy in 1990.”
After the abrogation of Article 370, over 130 civilians and 168 security personnel have been killed by militants in terror attacks, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal or SATP. While casualties among security forces have declined, violence and death are widespread.
In comparison to the period between 2015 and 2019 (before abrogation of Article 370), when 381 police and security forces personnel were killed in militant attacks, according to the SATP, such deaths reduced 52% since the abrogation of Article 370.
Since 2020, 164 security forces have been killed
The killing of minorities, including Kashmiri Pandits, didn't stop with the abrogation of Article 370. Militants killed at least 9 Kashmiri Hindus, Sikhs and migrants from other Indian states after 2019.
On 1 January 2023, for instance, militants killed seven civilians, including two children, in Dhangri village of Rajouri in Jammu, a region once largely free of militants but now in the crosshairs.
As Kashmir Calms, Jammu Flares
Militants have clearly moved towards the Jammu region of the union territory created in 2019, as security forces stifled their operation in the Kashmir Valley.
Over the last two years, security forces have lost more than 30 soldiers in deadly attacks by militants.
Former northern army commander Lt Gen D S Hooda (retd) said the shift of militancy from Kashmir to Jammu was inevitable, after the crackdown in Kashmir and the relocation of troops from Jammu to Ladakh following intrusions by China, which has taken over about 2,000 km of Indian territory over the last three years, something that Modi denied in June 2020.
A decade ago, Gen Hooda told Article 14, the police used to say that Jammu was free of militants. “Now, the army says that maybe there are 20, 25 terrorists residing in this area,” he said. “So, obviously, it is because some terrorists have come into this area and found some bases, thus big militant attacks.”
Hooda said local support for the militants “could not be ruled out”.
On 10 January 2024, Army chief Gen Manoj Pande acknowledged that the past six months had been “an area of concern” in the Rajouri-Poonch belt of Jammu.
“After 2003, terrorism was fully dismantled in the area (Jammu) and peace prevailed there till 2017-18,” said Pande. “As the situation is getting normal in the Valley, the area of Rajouri-Poonch was chosen by our adversary where it activated proxy outfits and abetted terrorism.”
Gen Pande 45 militants were killed in Rajouri-Poonch area in the past two years while five infiltration bids were foiled and 14 militants were killed in the hinterland in 2023 alone.
The Army, especially elite special forces, have suffered significant casualties over the past two to three years from “highly trained” militants in Rajouri-Poonch.
In October 2021, nine soldiers were killed in a two-week-long gunfight; four when militants stormed an army camp in August 2022; five were killed in an ambush in April 2023; five commandos were killed and a major injured in a roadside bomb.
Most of the attacks have been claimed by a newly formed militant outfit known as the People's Anti-Fascist Front.
Why Violence Has Come To Rajouri-Poonch
Rajouri and Poonch districts, northwest of Jammu, share over 200 km of the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The boundary runs over dense forests and mountains, from 4,000 ft to 12,000 ft, with mountain passes providing access. Poonch district has a Muslim majority (90%), while Rajouri district is 63% Muslim and 34% Hindu.
Foreign militants operating in the region share ethnic similarities with the local population, particularly in Rajouri and Poonch districts.
This similarity allows them to move freely without attracting suspicion. “Also, there are many divided families living in both the districts of this (Indian) and that (Pakistani) side of Jammu and Kashmir”, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"They are very difficult to suspect," he said.
The official said that the militants have reportedly made hideouts in the dense forest and caves of Rajouri and Poonch.
Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst and journalist from Jammu said that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, once called a “base camp” for the "liberation of Kashmir", had seen a decline in militant infrastructure due to bilateral peace efforts, including movement of people across the LoC.
"However, after 5 August 2019, militant launchpads there became active again, aiming to destabilise Jammu & Kashmir again," said Choudhary. Recent assaults in Jammu are designed to increase pressure on the Muslim population in the Jammu region, fostering greater alienation among the people.
"Militancy in Kashmir wouldn't have survived for more than five years if there was no alienation,” said Choudhary. “So, militants are now working on it in Jammu.”
A Brother Speaks
Back in Topa Peer, Naseer Ahmed, who gave farmer Safeer Hussain the ritual bath before burial explained the state in which he found his cousin’s body.
"Right from the heel to the neck, his body had clear signs of torture. His neck bone was completely broken," said Naseer Ahmed. “There were holes in his arms, as if he had been given electric shocks. The beating had turned his back side entirely black.”
Safeer Hussain is survived by four children, the youngest of whom is a two and a half-year-old son named Amaar Hamza.
Noor Ahmed, Safeer Hussain's brother and head constable with the paramilitary Border Security Force, told Article 14 that Hussain had a “good relationship” with the army. It was hard to believe, he said, that they would kill him.
“They [administration and army] are taking care of everything now, like jobs and education for the children, but the pain of losing a brother can never be filled,” said Noor Ahmed, who is currently posted in Rajasthan.
He said his mother gave food to the soldiers if there was an operation in the area.
"As I served in the forces, my mother, seeing soldiers, thought of me,” said head constable Noor Ahmed. “She fed them, treating them like her own sons.”
Safeer's death has not only brought grief and anger, he said, but has also raised questions about why he was killed, especially when the village has always supported the army.
"This village has a unique record—not a single soldier has fallen to militants here since the insurgency began," said Noor Ahmed.
"It was a common sight to see soldiers roaming around in the village,” said Noor Ahmed. “They know every single person in this village. Whenever they asked for things like milk, tea, and bread, the villagers would happily give it.”
'Pleaded With The Army'
When the army came to pick up civilians from Topa Peer on 22 December, 26-year-old Mohammed Showkat was also taken from his house, as his mother, Zainab Bi, pleaded in front of the soldiers not to take him.
"Three people in army uniforms came to our house, while the rest of the army was waiting a short distance away,” said Zainab Bi. “I went crying, with folded hands, asking them not to take my son. But they abused me and said, 'Why have you come here'.”
The soldiers took Showkat and other villagers to an army camp in Bufliaz. Fatima Kounsar, Showkat's wife, said her parents lived nearby.
"At around 9:30 am, they took Showkat and the others. By 11 am, we got a call from Showkat's in-laws' house, saying they could see Showkat and the other villagers who were detained,” said Nazeer Hussain, Showkat's father. “They told us that they were hearing screams of the villagers from the camp, that they were being tortured,"
Kounsar Fatima said she and other women of the village rushed to the army post, where they saw her husband being tortured.
"We begged them to spare our men," said Kounsar. "But instead, they abused me and said, 'We will also drag you inside the camp, shoot you, and remove your clothes, go back,.’”
As Farima turned back, fearing for her life, she said she, from the rooftop of her parent’s home, heard the men being tortured and beaten.
"Every part of his body had signs of torture,” said one of Showkat’s relative, requesting anonymity. “There were signs of burning caused by electric shocks. Who could endure such torture? We haven't even received the post-mortem report.”
With no proper road to the village, families and friends carried the bodies of the three men of cots for 3 km, after the army handed them over to the families.
A J&K police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media, said that the three bodies of the deceased bore deep torture marks. "They all had deep cuts caused by knives, clear cuts on arms and thighs," said the officer.
The post-mortem, according to an official of the civil administration, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was conducted inside the army camp.
"A civilian doctor was brought from outside,” said the official. “The post mortem was conducted inside the camp so that the situation in the region did not turn violent.”
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