Kashmiris Lose Sleep as Night Raids and Arrests Become the Norm

Raids on villages are not unusual in the Valley, reeling under curfews and strikes.

On the night of 1 October, a team of police, army and paramilitary troopers laid siege around Howoora-Mishpora village in Kulgam, one of the four districts of south Kashmir that have been the hotbeds of the prevailing unrest in the Valley.

After authorities launched a sweeping crackdown on civilian population to prevent pro-freedom protests in Kashmir, nocturnal raids and arrests have become common occurrences. Nearly 2,000 persons have been either detained or put behind bars, including a prominent human rights activist, according to officials.

It was a similar raid to make arrests that took forces to Howoora-Mishpora village on Saturday night where alerted by volunteer groups set up for such an eventuality, hundreds of angry villagers came out of their homes and staged protests that boiled down into clashes, compelling the forces to retreat.

The next morning on 2 October, the forces returned. Saleema Bano was perhaps the first person to see them in the pre-dawn twilight. She was alarmed by the thought of fire in the neighbourhood. When she rushed out, it was their cowshed that had caught fire, the flames lighting up uniformed men surrounding the locality "like ghosts".

I started screaming at the top of my voice. There was an announcement from the mosque also. Soon women and children came out on the roads since most of the men had gone to offer morning prayers but the forces didn’t spare anyone and unleashed a reign of terror.

When the dust settled in the village, two houses and equal number of cowsheds, a shop, paddy stacks and granaries were set on fire, allegedly by forces, who assaulted nearly three dozen men and also ransacked a mosque before taking away 12 persons including two persons accused of participating in stone pelting.

I had locked the shop but when I returned after the forces left the village, I found the shutter open. The lock had been broken and the shop was vandalised. Many valuables including medicines were missing.

Owner of a lone medical store, in Hoowora Mishpora.

The Quint visited the village on Sunday to record the aftermath of the nocturnal raids which have traumatised the residents. Such raids are not exceptional in the Valley which is reeling under curfew and strikes from the last three months.

On 27 September, nearly a dozen people were injured when forces tried to foil a pro-freedom rally in Kanelwan village of south Kashmir's Anantnag district. The forces also set ablaze the paddy harvest and damaged electricity transformers.

The forces had erected barricades and laid spools of concertina wires in various villages of Dachnipora to prevent people from marching. However, as people resisted and tried to organise the rally, forces resorted to baton charge, lobbed tear shells and used pellet guns.

Witnesses

“More than 12 people were injured in the forces action — two of them with pellets," they said. The forces, locals alleged, went on a rampage in Kanelwan as well as adjoining Sundpora village by barging into houses, beating inmates including women and children, vandalising property and damaging doors and windows.

“Whatever little we harvested this year was destroyed by forces within no time. I have lost the yearly quota of rice grain and I don't know how we are going to sustain now. This is the height of tyranny,” said a farmer Ali Muhammad.