Page 497 - SSB Interview: The Complete Guide, Second Edition

Poshpora to conduct a search operation. The men were taken from their
homes and assembled in an open field for interrogation overnight. Once the
men had been taken away, soldiers allegedly gang-raped a large number of
village women overnight till 9 am the next day. Local villagers alleged that

up to 100 women “were gang-raped without any consideration of their age,
married, unmarried, pregnant, etc.” The victims ranged in age from 13 to 80.

The village headman and other leaders have claimed that they reported the
rapes to army officials on 27 February, but the officials denied the charges
and refused to take any further action. However, army officials claim that no

report was ever made. On 5 March, villagers complained to Kupwara district
magistrate SM Yasin, who visited the village on 7 March to investigate. On
18 March, divisional commissioner Wajahat Habibullah visited the village

and filed a confidential report, parts of which were later released to the
public.

In response to criticism of the government’s handling of the investigation,

the army requested the Press Council of India to investigate the incident. The
investigative team visited Kunan Poshpora in June, more than three months
after the alleged attacks. Upon interviewing a number of the alleged victims,

the team claimed that contradictions in their testimony rendered their
allegations of rape “baseless”. The Press Council’s dismissal of all the Kunan
Poshpora allegations and the manner in which it carried out its investigation

were widely criticised.

The United States Department of State, in its 1992 report on international
human rights, rejected the Indian government’s conclusion and determined

that there was credible evidence to support charges that an elite army unit
engaged in mass rape in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora.

Following the release of the Press Council’s report, Indian authorities

dismissed all of the allegations of mass rape as groundless. No further
investigations were conducted. In 1994, a Women’s Initiative report featured
the testimony of several of the alleged victims. Many complained of social

ostracism from their families and communities because of the “shame” of
having been raped. Some of the alleged victims reportedly committed suicide
after the incident. According to the report, not a single marriage proposal had