Kishtwar (Jammu and Kashmir): At the entrance of the remote Muslim village of Kwath in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district flies an Indian tricolour, an expression of allegiance in a region often accused of divided loyalties.
Three days after four labourers from Kwath, a village of around 400 people—mostly labourers, tradesmen or subsistence farmers growing maize—were allegedly tortured in custody by the army’s 11 Rashtriya Rifles, locals were still struggling to come to terms with the violence inflicted on them, even though they were, as Dawood Ahmad, a resident of Kwath and uncle of one of the victims, put it, “true nationalists”.
On 20 November 2024 at 10 am—10 days after a soldier was killed and three injured on a nearby hill—the four men received calls on their mobile phones from an army camp at Chas, 2 km from the village, asking them to come over.
Kwath is on a mountainside in the Chenab range and 5 km or a 90-minute trek from the nearest motorable road. There is little contact with the outside world on most days, and the army is an abiding presence.
Without wasting time, the four men headed for the camp “without any fear”, according to Mohammad Ramzan, father of one of the victims. Army officers from the nearby camp have the phone numbers of many villagers, who often do odd jobs or supply food to the camp.
At the camp, the four men, identified as Mehraj-ud-din, 40, Sajad Ahmad, 33, Abdul Kabir, 35 and Mushtaq Ahmad, 36 were “ruthlessly beaten” for “hours”, according to various accounts provided by the people of Kwath to Article 14.
By evening when the four men did not return home, the families of the victims were anxious and asked Irshad Ahmad, a carpenter who had previously done work at the camp, to check on them.
“When I reached outside the camp, I found the four civilians outside the camp crying for help,” said Irshad Ahmad. “They had been tortured brutally and blood was oozing from Sajjad Ahmad, one among them.”
Others displayed photographs of the injuries inflicted on the four men, their buttocks, legs, ribs and back an angry black and blue, alleging that the army and police later blocked their vehicles as they sought to transport the torture victims to a civilian hospital, and forced them to go to an army hospital instead.
The army announced a probe “to ascertain the facts” and said “necessary follow-up action will be ensured”. Lt Col Suneel Bartwal, public relations officer (defence) in Jammu, told Article 14 that “the inquiry is under progress”.
Amid an upsurge of terrorist attacks and ambushes in J&K, particularly in Jammu—which was largely free of violence during the worst days of militancy—over the last two years, the army in some cases has been accused of violence against civilians suspected of sympathising with, sheltering or not reporting terrorists.
Dawood Ahmad, Mehraj-ud-din’s uncle, told Article 14 that all those allegedly tortured told him that soldiers accused them of not informing the army about militants in the area.
“The victims said they had not seen any militant and that they would have definitely informed [the army] if they had,” said Dawood Ahmad.
Despite their anger and sorrow, the villagers—who have worked closely with soldiers over decades—did not blame the army but some officers for the violence inflicted on the four men.
They alleged about 40 locals were on a list drawn up by “some officials” for voting for the National Conference—the party that in October won J&K assembly elections, held after 10 years. Article 14 could not verify the allegation.
As this story was published, the police had registered no case. “We have not received any complaint from the families,” said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Army Violence Against Civilians
The incident at Kwath comes 11 months after three civilians died of army torture in a similarly remote village called Topa Peer in Jammu’s Poonch district, as Article 14 reported in January 2024, among 10 men allegedly tortured after a deadly ambush that claimed the lives of four soldiers on 21 December 2023.
On 10 November 2024, militants killed a junior commissioned officer (JCO) of the army's special forces during a firefight in the same area. On 8 November 2024, militants abducted and killed two village defence guards in Jammu’s Keshwan region, 30 km to the south-east of Kwath.
An internal inquiry by the army found soldiers had tortured the men during interrogation in Poonch, and recommended “administrative and disciplinary action”. The J&K administration paid the families of each dead man Rs 10 lakh compensation and offered them a government job.
There has been no word since, a common enough fallout to violence inflicted by the army, which since 1990, when the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) 1958, was applied to J&K, has been legally protected from criminal action.
Over the years, there have been repeated allegations of torture of civilians (here, here and here) in J&K. Torture qualifies as a war crime, according to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Geneva Conventions.
The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, both advocacy group—now moribund after official action against them—documented 432 cases of torture between 1990 and 2017, with 70% of the victims being civilians.
In January 2024, the army established its first “Human Rights Cell” at its headquarters in New Delhi to address allegations of human rights violations during the counter-insurgency operations in J&K and the Northeast.
Similar violence against civilians was reported in January 2023 from Kashmir’s Kupwara district, when an army unit picked up Abdul Rashid Dar, a civilian, for questioning. The army then claimed that Dar fled from their custody.
Dar’s decomposed body was recovered two months later from a nearby forest. The army, according to the family, did not inform the police about his detention.
In Kwath, Topa Peer (Poonch district) and other previous cases, the army violated AFSPA rules, which require the army to hand over detainees to the nearest police station “with the least possible delay, together with a report of the circumstances occasioning the arrest”.
A police official from Kishtwar confirmed to Article 14 that it was villagers and not the army who informed the police about the detention of the four men of Kwath.
Stopped En Route To Hospital
A poor village without access to roads, clean water, education and healthcare, a majority of those in Kwath are labourers, as were the four who were tortured.
Around 4 pm, Irshad Ahmad informed the villagers that four men from their village had been tortured by the army. Villagers, including families of those injured, gathered outside the army camp and carried the injured men back to the village on their shoulders.
By 5 pm, they reached home.
"Their condition was really bad and we thought two among them wouldn't survive," said Mohammad Ramzan, father of Sajjad Ahmad.
A hospital was 40 km away and the villagers carried the four men downhill for an hour, they said.
“We managed to reach a motorable road and the victims were boarded in the vehicles,” said Dawood Ahmad. “However, we were stopped by the army and the police who assured us that the matter would be resolved and the accused punished.”
Officers assured villagers, they said, that the army would pay Rs 25,000 to each victim and living expenses till they recovered.
“They (the army) also assured us that they would have the victims treated in their own hospital and, if the need arose, they would move them to an army hospital in Udhampur or Srinagar,” said Abdul Rashid, father of Mushtaq Ahmad.
The villagers said they were determined to get the four men to a hospital without wasting more time.
“However, the army blocked the road and didn’t allow vehicles to move towards the hospital in Kishtwar,” according to Dawood Ahmad.
With no other option, they agreed to have the victims admitted in an army hospital at Bandarkoot village, around 30 km from Kwath.
‘Politics’ Behind The Torture
The people of Kwath said they held no grudges against the army but accused those who “orchestrated” the violence of being in league with “some officers” of the army unit in Chas.
“We see a plot behind this incident,” said Dawood Ahmad. “The fact that we voted for a National Conference candidate and the workers of a rival candidate told us that you will be punished for voting against them,” he said.
Rival candidates allegedly told them that there was a “list of 40 people” with the army camp, from the village who would be “punished”, said Dawood Ahmad.
“We want to know what’s going on, why we were punished and for what crime,” said Dawood Ahmad.
Kwath is part of the Muslim-majority Inderwal constituency, where a Hindu candidate, P L Sharma, won the recent assembly election. Now a member of the legislative assembly, Sharma told Article 14 that losing candidates “couldn't digest” the defeat and accused them of trying to intimidate his voters.
Sharma said he had raised the issue of torture with the local army brigadier who had taken “serious note”.
“I am being told that a major and two army soldiers will be court martialed for this incident,” he said. “The issue stands resolved now, and the army won’t detain any suspect [in the future]. Instead the police will investigate.”
No member of the armed forces in J&K can be prosecuted in civilian courts without union government sanction, which has never been given over the 34 years the AFSPA has been in place.
There have indeed been court martials, which do not require such sanction, and while these have indicted officers, armed forces tribunals have often overturned such indictments (here and here).
In a post on X on 21 November, the army said that “based on specific intelligence of the move of a group of terrorists in the Kishtwar Sector, an operation was launched by Rashtriya Rifles on 20 November 2024”.
“There are some reports on the alleged ill-treatment of civilians during the conduct of the operation,” the post said. “An investigation is being launched to ascertain the facts. Necessary follow-up action will be ensured.”
A top police official posted in the district described the alleged torture as “unfortunate” and said it could have been “avoided”.
The Larger Backdrop
The alleged army torture of the four men of Kwath forms a part of the backdrop of the union government’s—now faltering—attempt to end unrest and militancy in J&K.
Before the termination of Article 370, security forces in J&K launched “Operation Allout” a special operation to eliminate militants, most locals.
Hundreds of armed militants were killed, especially in southern Kashmir. Sympathisers and supporters were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978.
The government seized the properties of many “over ground workers” or OGWs—a term used by officials to describe sympathisers and supporters of militancy.
There were no more than 70 terrorists left and terrorism was ending, if it wasn't already over, India Today quoted a senior police officer saying in April 2023.
Instead, terrorist violence spilled over to Hindu-majority Jammu, where local support is limited but strikes against security forces easier because large parts of the province are covered by mountains and forests.
Experts said that well-trained terrorists from Pakistan carried out deadly attacks (here, here and here) on security forces and civilians, mostly Hindus.
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain, former commander of the army’s Srinagar-based Chinar Corps said terrorists were using the terrain of the Pir Panjal mountain range, “temporarily exploiting some voids” in army deployment in Jammu due to the “creeping return of normalcy”.
Of Jammu’s 10 districts, eight have reported deadly attacks on security forces, including Rajouri, Poonch, Reasi, Doda, Kishtwar, Kathua, Udhampur and Jammu.
The uptick in violence in Jammu began after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the partial autonomy of J&K in August, 2019, and reduced it to a union territory.
Between August 2019 and November 2024, 194 security forces, 161 civilians, and 795 militants were killed in Jammu district, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
Over 40 militant-related violent incidents have been reported in Jammu since 2021, with civilian casualties rising. In 2024, 44 persons, including 18 security forces and 13 militants have been killed thus far in Jammu alone.
For the first time in two decades, the army, on 28 October 2024, deployed tanks during an operation following an attack on an army convoy. The government also deployed commandos of the elite National Security Guard.
As the wave of violence headed for Kishtwar, officials detained many former militants and alleged OGWs. On 8 November 2024, the J&K police even used the J&K PSA against five civilians, accusing them of having links with militants and being involved in “criminal as well as anti-national activities”.
General Hasnain described the current level of terrorism in J&K as being of “balanced intensity”, with no suicide attacks or improvised explosive devices being used.
“These are the types of terrorist acts associated with loss of control of the security forces and not the low-level terrorist operations which are defensive in nature,” he said. “The terrorists aim to achieve two things—survival and maintaining/regaining relevance. However, the aspiration is always to return to the heyday of terrorist actions.”
A former general who headed the army's northern command and spoke to Article 14 on condition of anonymity said that the number of militants currently were minimal compared to 2007 and 2008.
“We used to have 200 encounters every month and over 2,700-3,000 militants would be killed annually,” said the former general. “The numbers (militants) are very few, but they want to show their presence with these attacks.”
He said, as many have, that terrorists were exploiting the withdrawal of troops in Jammu after clashes with the Chinese army in Ladakh in June 2020.
Torture An ‘Aberation’
Lt Gen Hasnain, termed the torture of civilians as “aberrations”, arguing that the army was “the first” to acknowledge such incidents.
“The raksha mantri (defence minister) has clearly mandated the army to win hearts and minds while conducting operations,” said Lt Gen Hasnain. “In the large number of operations that take place, some mistakes will occur but the army is quick to investigate and take action.”
“An army brigadier and other officials apologised for the mistake and acknowledged that they had committed a grave mistake,” said Dawood Ahmad. Officers assured the villagers that the “mistake” would not be repeated, he said.
The families of the four men tortured in Kwath said the army's acknowledgment of wrongdoing and their assurance that such incidents would not be repeated convinced them to "compromise."
"This decision was in the best interest of both parties,” said Abdul Rashid, father of Mushtaq Ahmad, one of the victims, “the army and the villagers.”
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