Page 349 - Failure to Triumph - Journey of A Student

journalist Asra Nomani states that while India itself is a secular state, Muslims are politically,
culturally and economically marginalized when compared to Hindus in India as a whole. The
Government’s decision to transfer 99 acres of forest land to a Hindu organization solidified this
feeling and led to one of the largest protest rallies in Jammu and Kashmir.

Other reasons

The Indian National Census shows that Kashmir lags behind other states in most socio-development

indicators such as literacy rates and has unusually high levels of unemployment. This contributes to
anti-government sentiment.

Kunan Poshpora Mass Rape

The Kunan Poshpora mass rape occurred on February 23, 1991, when units of the Indian army
launched a search and interrogation operation in the village of Kunan Poshpora, located in Kashmir’s
remote Kupwara District. At least 53 women were allegedly gang raped by soldiers that night.
However, Human Rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have reported that the number

of raped women could be as high as 100. Although the Indian government’s investigations into the
incident rejected the allegations as “baseless," international human rights organizations have
expressed serious doubts about the integrity of these investigations and the manner in which they were
conducted, stating that the Indian government launched a “campaign to acquit the army of charges of
human rights violations and discredit those who brought the charges.

According to reports, on February 23, 1991 at approximately 11:00PM soldiers from the 4th
Rajputana Rifles cordoned off the village of Kunan 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
9:00 AM the next day. Local villagers alleged that up to 100 women “were gang-raped without any
consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy 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 February 27, but the officials denied the charges and refused to take any further action. However,
army officials claim that no report was ever made. On March 5, villagers complained to Kupwara

district magistrate S.M. Yasin, who visited the village on March 7 to investigate. On March 18,
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 allegation, and the manner in
which it carried out its investigation were widely criticized.

The United States Department of State, in its 1992 report on international human rights, rejected the