#AgoniesOfWomenInIIOJK
Srinagar, March 08 (KMS): As the world is observing the International Women’s Day on March 8, today, the sufferings and victimization of Kashmiri women at the hands of Indian troops, police and agencies continue unabated in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
A report by the Research Section of Kashmir Media Service, released on this occasion, reveals the devastating impact of Indian state terrorism on women in IIOJK. Since January 2001, at least 688 women have been martyred by Indian forces’ personnel. The report further highlights that, since January 1989, 22,981 women have been widowed, while 11,266 have been molested or disgraced at the hands of Indian troops, underscoring the ongoing brutality and suffering endured by Kashmiri women.
The report underscores some of the most horrifying crimes committed by Indian troops, including the Kunan-Poshpora mass rape, the Shopian double rape and murder of 17-year-old Aasiya Jan and her sister-in-law Neelofar Jan, and the brutal gang rape and murder of eight-year-old Aasifa Bano in Kathua. These cases stand as grim reminders of the widespread sexual violence and atrocities inflicted upon Kashmiri women under Indian occupation.
The Kashmir dispute has been marred by the widespread use of sexual violence by multiple belligerents since its inception.
In 1947, during the Jammu massacres, mass rapes were perpetrated by Dogra troops, alongside Hindu fanatics, in a brutal campaign against the territory’s Muslim population. Thousands of Muslim women were abducted, raped, and subjected to unimaginable horrors, particularly in Jammu, Rajouri, Poonch, and Kathua. These atrocities were not random acts of violence but a systematic attempt at ethnic cleansing, actively facilitated by the forces of the Dogra State under Maharaja Hari Singh.
Since the 1988 popular uprising, scholars and human rights organizations have consistently documented the use of rape as a weapon of war by Indian state forces, including the Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Border Security Force (BSF). The deliberate and targeted nature of these crimes underscores the continuing pattern of oppression in IIOJK, where sexual violence remains a tool of subjugation and terror against the local population.
After 1989, Indian forces selectively raped, tortured and killed Kashmiri Muslims, burnt their homes and business centers. The Indian forces have committed rape as a form of retaliation against civilians, who were demanding right to self-determination under UN supervision.
According to a 1993 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, the Indian forces use rape as a method of retaliation against Kashmiri civilians. Most rape cases, according to the same report, have occurred during cordon-and-search operations.
In October 1992, representatives from Asia Watch group and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) traveled to Kashmir to document rape and other human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war by Indian forces. Later they released a book “Rape in Kashmir” on May 9, 1993.
The KMS report further said that thousands of women lost their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers in the occupied territory who were subjected to custodial disappearance by the Indian troops. As per the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, at least 8,000 Kashmiris went missing in custody during the past 36 years, it added.
The report revealed that thousands of school boys and girls were also injured by the pellets fired by Indian troops and police personnel while over a hundred including 19-month-old Heeba Jan, 2-year-old Nusrat Jan, Ulfat Hameed (17), Insha Mushtaq, Ifrah Shakoor (17), Shakeela Bano, Tammana (11), Shabroza Mir (16), Shakeela Begum (35) and Rafia Bano (31) lost their eyesight due to pellet injuries.
Four-year-old Zuhra Majeed was hit by pellets in her legs and abdomen after her family was targeted by Indian police outside their home in Qamarwari in Srinagar on July 10, 2016.
As per the report, a police constable and Special Police Officer (SPO) in July 2021 gang raped a minor Dalit girl in Dansal area of Jammu.
The report said that the world community must wake up to stop sexual violence being perpetrated by Indian troops in IIOJK.
Over three dozen women and girls including Hurriyat leaders, Aasiya Andrabi, Fehmeeda Sofi, Naheeda Nasreen, Ishrat ,Nigeena, Sarda Begum, Munira Begum, Mudifa, Rashida, Suraya Rashid Wani, Zaytun Akhtar, Shams Begam, Anjum Younis,Tabasum Maqbool, Anjum Younis, Saima Akther, Rubeena, Haseena, Zareena Akhter, Tahira Kouser, Suraya Rashid ,Aafreena alias Aayat, Shabroza Bano, Masoom Ali ,Gulshan Naaz , Nusrat Jan , Maryama Begum are facing illegal detention in different jails of IIOJK and India. They are being political victimized only for the reason that they represent the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and their demand for the right to self-determination, it said
The report further pointed out that womenfolk are among the majority of the Kashmiris suffering from multiple psychic problems. The women who lost their men due to enforced disappearances are referred to as “half-widows,” because of their uncertain status between wifehood and widowhood.
Many mothers died after waiting for their disappeared sons while widows and half-widows are in pain since decades in the occupied territory.
From Azad Jammu and Kashmir, around 400 women who married Kashmiri youth are facing injustice in the occupied territory as the Indian government is neither giving them citizenship rights, nor travel documents to go back to AJK. Their children are denied admissions in government schools. “I came here in 2012. My mother died recently but I could not go to see her one last time. We can’t meet our relatives and family members. Parents of many women died during these years but they could not attend the funeral,” said Saba Fayaz who belongs to AJK and married a youth from IIOJK.
Women in Kashmir don’t enjoy the basic rights which are given under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and even promised under CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly described as an international bill of rights for women.
The report said Kashmiri women stand like a rock today facing the worst sort of political and social pressures like the wife of illegally detained Hurriyat leader Ayaz Akbar, Rafiqa Begum, who died due to cancer in Maloora, Shalteing in Srinagar in 2021. Ayaz Akbar is facing illegal detention in Tihar Jail since July 2017 on false charges.
Another victim, Maroofa Meraaj, wife of illegally detained Hurriyat leader Raja Meraaj-ud-Din Kalwal having four daughters said, “I am suffering from depression and so are my daughters who have not seen their father since long.” Her mother-in-law and mother of the jailed Hurriyat leader, Raja Meraaj-ud-Din Kalwal also died due to depression few years ago.
“Our life has turned into hell. In his absence, things have become too difficult. Our relatives do help us. But it can’t go a long way. We have no one to look after us,” Maroofa said, adding her husband has been kept in jail just for his political views.
The families of illegally detained APHC leaders and activists, who are lodged in different jails, are waiting their son’s and husband’s release.
There are hundreds of mothers, wives and daughters who are waiting the return of their dear ones including APHC Chairman, Masarrat Alam Butt, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Dr Hameed Fayaz, Bilal Siddiqi, Maulvi Bashir Irfani, Zafar Akbar Butt, Abdul Ahad Parra, human rights defender Khurram Parviaz, and other activists and youth languishing in different jails of IIOJK and India for last several years.
Meanwhile, APHC leaders, Yasmeen Raja, Farida Bahenji and Ms Hafza Bano have said the women across the world are observing International Women’s Day but the oppressed women of IIOK have nothing to commemorate. They urged the instruments of international justice and watchdogs like UN as well as the international community to intervene and take cognizance of the sufferings of the Kashmiri women. They said the Kashmiri women are taking a leading role in the ongoing freedom struggle and called upon the world community to force India to protect the women’s rights in IIOJK.
Meanwhile, according to a 1996 HRW report, Indian forces’ personnel in Kashmir have used "rape as a counterinsurgency tactic". Scholar Inger Skhjelsbaek states that the pattern of rape in Kashmir is that when soldiers enter civilian residences, they kill or evict the men before raping the women inside. Scholar Shubh Mathur calls rape an "essential element of the Indian military strategy in Kashmir.
According to Seema Kazi, there is no difference between the motivations behind rape in Kashmir with those which caused rapes to be committed in Rwanda and the Balkans. Kazi opines that rape in Kashmir is a "cultural weapon of war" and that the rape of Kashmiri women by Indian forces, in the background of a mainly Hindu country repressing a Muslim populace, functions as a tool of "subordinating" Kashmiri males and the wider Kashmiri community. She also states that rape is used to demoralize the Kashmiri resistance and that there have been documented cases of Indian troops confessing that they were commanded to rape Kashmiri women.
At the 52nd United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Professor William Baker gave testimony, that rape in Kashmir was not merely a case of isolated incidents involving undisciplined soldiers, rather the Indian forces were actively deploying rape on the Kashmiri populace as a method of humiliation and frightening. He cited as evidence his interviews with several victims whose family members, including husbands and children, were made to witness their rapes.
An Amnesty International report in 1992 stated that rape is conducted during counter-offensives against freedom fighters as part of a bid to methodically shame local Kashmiri communities.
Dr Maiti, a professor of political science at Burdwan University, has condemned the oppressive Indian use of rape, noting that most of the Kashmiri rape victims have been civilians.
A study in 2005 by Médecins Sans Frontières concluded that the rate of sexual violence against Kashmiri women was one of the highest among the world's conflict zones, with 11.6% of respondents, out of a total 510 people in their survey, reporting personal experience of sexual abuse. The study also found that in comparison to many other regions experiencing conflict, such as Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka, the number of witnesses to rape in Kashmir was far greater. 13% of respondents in the study stated that they had witnessed a rape after 1989, while the proportion of those who had heard about a rape since 1989 figured at 63%. The proportion of respondents who had heard about more than five rape incidents stood at 59.9%. The proportion of those who had personally been witness to even more than five incidents of rape was 5.1%. According to Kazi, international awareness is low about the large extent of sexual violence in Kashmir.
Scholar Dara Kay Cohen from Harvard University lists the conflict in Kashmir, alongside Bosnia and Rwanda, as among the "worst" of the "so-called mass rape wars".
According to Human Rights Watch: There are no reliable statistics on the number of rapes committed by Indian forces in Kashmir. Human rights groups have documented many cases since 1990, but because many of the incidents have occurred in remote villages, it is impossible to confirm any precise number. There can be no doubt that the use of rape is common and routinely goes unpunished.
It was reported that Indian forces committed gang-rape of 882 Kashmiri women in 1992 alone. The Humanitarian Law Project/International Educational Development documented more than 200 cases of rape from January 1994.
Many cases are not reported because of the shame and stigma associated with rape in Kashmir. Human rights groups state that 150 top officers, of the rank of major or above, have participated in torture as well as sexual violence and that the Indian government was covering up such acts.
In 2016, Kashmiri human rights activist and lawyer Parvez Imroz said that a vast majority of cases of sexual harassment by Indian forces in Kashmir go unreported.
Rape by Indian forces has notably occurred in different operational areas and it has also happened to women from the Gujjar community, who live on the periphery of Kashmiri society. According to journalist Freny Manecksha, who tried to document conflict-related rapes in Kashmir in 2012–2013, their remote location has left them more susceptible to sexual violence.
According to scholars Om Prakash Dwivedi and V. G. Julie Rajan, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has enabled the Indian military and other personnel to commit war crimes with impunity.
According to Human Rights Watch, the military courts in India, in general, were proved to be incompetent to deal with cases of serious human rights abuses and were responsible in covering up evidence and protecting the involved officers.
Amnesty International in its report in 2015, titled “Denied”-Failures in Accountability in Jammu and Kashmir, says, "...with respect to investigations, an inquiry that is conducted by the same authority accused of the crime raises serious questions about the independence and impartiality of those proceedings”, adding that according to the international law, an independent authority that is not involved in the alleged violations has to investigate such crimes.
Khurram Parvez remarks that women fear reprisals from the Army to file the cases of rape. He says, "This is because there are cases in which when rape was reported, members of their families were attacked or prosecuted." He also states that it would be technically very difficult to prove rape, since the incidents happen in the areas which are completely under the Army's control.
Some of the harrowing cases of sexual violence committed by Indian forces’ personnel in IIOJK since 1990 are outlined below:
Some of the cases of rape by Indian troops in IIOJK are give as under:
On June 26, 1990, a 24-year-old woman from Jamia Qadeem, Sopore, was brutally raped by Indian Border Security Force (BSF) personnel during a search operation. An FIR was registered against the BSF in Sopore police station in July 1990.
On March 7, 1990, Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel raided multiple houses in the Chhanpora locality of Srinagar, subjecting several women, including two minor girls, to brutal sexual violence. A fact-finding mission by the 'Committee for Initiative in Kashmir,' which visited the Valley between March 12 and 16, 1990, documented harrowing accounts from the victims. Among them, 24-year-old Noora was forcibly dragged out of her kitchen by 20 CRPF personnel and raped alongside her sister-in-law, Zaina. The victims also witnessed two minor girls being molested.
In 1991, a mentally ill elderly woman was brutally raped by Indian forces in the Barbar Shah area of Srinagar.
On February 23, 1991, during a search and cordon operation in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Kupwara district, an Indian army unit gang-raped approximately 100 women of all ages, ranging from eight to eighty years old.
On August 20, 1991, Indian troops committed mass rape in the Pazipora-Ballipora area of Kupwara district, with estimates of the number of victims ranging from eight to fifteen or more.
On October 10, 1992, a unit of the 22nd Grenadiers of the Indian army gang-raped between six and nine women, including an 11-year-old girl and a 60-year-old woman, during a search operation in the village of Saidapora, Shopian.
On July 20, 1992, during a search operation in Haran, Ganderbal district, the Indian army raped at least two women. One victim, interviewed by Asia Watch and PHR, reported being gang-raped by two Indian troops in turns. Another woman from the same incident was raped by a Sikh soldier while another soldier stood guard.
On October 1, 1992, after killing ten people in the hamlet of Bakhikar, BSF forces entered the nearby village of Gurihakhar. Several women and a teenage girl were raped during this operation. One woman, in an interview with Asia Watch, revealed that she tried to protect her daughter from the humiliation of being identified as a rape victim by describing herself as the victim instead.
Before the Bijbehara massacre, a significant incident of molestation and gang rape occurred in the Bijbehara area of Islamabad (Anantnag) district in 1993. However, the elders in the area chose to hush up the incident due to the fear that revealing the crimes would bring shame upon the families of the victims. Later, in August 1993, during a violent operation on the outskirts of Bijbehara town, Indian army personnel raped a woman in the Gadhangipora area.
On 17 June 1994, seven women were brutally raped by Indian troops of the Rashtriya Rifles in the Hyhama area of Kupwara district, including two officers, Major Ramesh and Raj Kumar.
In 1994, a 60-year-old woman was raped by Indian troops in Sheikhpora, while the male members of her family were locked away.
In 1994, a woman and her 12-year-old daughter were subjected to rape by Indian forces in the Theno Budapathary Kangan area of Ganderbal district.
On 30 December 1995, the Indian Army's Rashtriya Rifles barged into a house in Wurwun village of Pulwama, and subjected three women to sexual assault.
In November 1997, a girl fell victim to the brutality of Indian forces, raped in the Narbal Pingalgom area of Pulwama.
On 13 April 1997, twelve young Kashmiri girls near Srinagar were stripped naked and gang-raped by Indian troops.
On April 22, 1997, Indian armed forces personnel entered the home of a 32-year-old woman in Wavoosa, Lolab Valley, Kupwara district. They molested her 12-year-old daughter and raped her three other daughters, aged 14, 16, and 18. A woman who tried to stop the assault was beaten.
October 5, 1998, A 50-year-old woman from Ludna village, Doda district, told Human Rights Watch that eight soldiers from the Rashtriya Rifles barged into her house. After beating her, an army captain raped her, saying, “You are Muslims, and you will all be treated like this.”
On June 3, 2000, Mumtaza, a 10th-grade student from Dhar village, Doda district, was abducted by Indian army personnel from the 10 Rashtriya Rifles.
October 29, 2000, during a search operation, troops from the 15 Bihar Regiment took a woman to a camp in Bihota, Doda district. The next day, 20 women attempted to rescue her but were detained, sexually assaulted, and held for hours by the army.
April 22, 2002, Indian BSF troops from the 58th Battalion raided the house of a Norwegian woman in Kullar Pahalgam, Islamabad district, and raped her while she was residing as a paying guest.
October 28, 2004, four Indian army personnel raped a 21-year-old woman in a guesthouse near Zero Bridge, Srinagar.
In 2004, Hameeda, a 16-year-old from Kupwara district, was abducted, tortured, and raped by two police officers attempting to extract information about her cousin, according to the Himal South Asian Review. When she failed to cooperate, an army officer raped her. Her father had to beg for her release.
On November 6, 2004, in Baderpayeen, Handwara, Indian army personnel raped a mother and her daughter. According to Khurram Parvez, programme coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, despite the gravity of the crime, officers downplayed the incident, citing the Muslim identity of the alleged rapist, Major Rahman Hussain, who was convicted only for trespassing instead of rape.
On March 7, 2005, Indian Border Security Force soldiers from the 112th Battalion molested 16-year-old Bilqees Bano and her mother Farida after barging into their house during a search operation in Kulangam, Kupwara district.
On March 12, 2005, during a search operation in Theevan, Kangan, Srinagar, Indian army’s 24 Rashtriya Rifles, led by Major Chauhan, dragged, molested, and beat five women, including Naseema Akhter, and tore off their clothes.
On March 17, 2005, Indian troops from the 138 BN BSF attempted to molest women after barging into their huses during a search operation in Rajpora, Tral, Pulwama.
On March 18, 2005, an Indian army sentry molested Shafeeqa, 40, in Chatabal, Srinagar, when she visited a police chowki to drop food for her son, who had been detained by police.
On March 22, 2005, Indian police constable Muhammad Sidiq Khan from Sherbagh Police Division, Islamabad, was charged with "outraging the modesty" of a girl. A case was filed after medical evidence confirmed the rape.
Between May 29-30, 2009, two women, Asiya and Nelofar Jan, were abducted, raped, and murdered by Indian paramilitary forces from the Central Reserve Police Force in Bongam, Shopian district.
On 10 January 2018, 8-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano was abducted, raped and killed by seven Hindu males including a police officer in the Rasana village near Kathua.
On July 12, 2021, a Special Police Officer (SPO) raped a minor Dalit girl in Dansal area of Jammu district. KMS-