Police killings stir anger in Indian Kashmir

INDIA: The frail, elderly man fell to his knees beside a pile of freshly dug earth that laid bare an unmarked grave.

"Even if I were blind I would know this was my son," wailed Ghulam Rasool Padder as police in Indian Kashmir exhumed the bullet-riddled body of a man wrapped in a white shroud.

Authorities described the dead man as a Pakistani militant, but relatives said he was an ordinary carpenter.

"I can recognise him. He's my blood," sobbed the 65-year-old Padder as the body was placed in a simple wooden coffin in Sumbhal village, just north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir.

So far eight policemen - all belonging to a special counter-insurgency group in Srinagar's Ganderbal district - have been arrested over allegations that they shot dead civilians and claimed they were rebels to earn cash rewards and promotions.

The allegations have put the spotlight on security forces in the Himalayan state.

They have also stirred angry demonstrations and cries of "freedom for Kashmir" in the region where more than 44,000 people have died in a separatist revolt that has raged since 1989, according to official figures.

Investigations are also underway into at least four other Kashmiri civilians who are alleged to have met the same fate as Padder's 35-year-old son Abdul Rehman, a father of five.

Rehman disappeared in December on a visit to Srinagar. Kashmir police, seeking to find him, finally traced his mobile phone to an assistant police sub-inspector.

Media reports say the sub-inspector admitted under interrogation that Rehman had been picked up by police, killed and branded a Pakistani militant. The policemen then returned the body to villagers in Sumbhal to bury.

The Indian Express reported that police had awarded the special operations group in Ganderbal 120,000 rupees (2,732 dollars) for Rehman's killing.

Results of DNA tests are still awaited to confirm the identity of five bodies that have been exhumed, including the one believed to be Rehman. Another victim is thought to have been a perfume seller, a third an Islamic cleric.

Indian Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has ordered a probe and vowed to use an "iron hand" against police who kill civilians and claim they are rebels.

"It is the government's firm resolve to deal with an iron hand with those policemen responsible for the killing of innocents just for getting promotions or rewards," Azad said.

"Any security person found guilty ... will not be spared. Nobody is above the law," he told the Kashmir Assembly.

But human rights groups charge that the five cases are just the tip of an iceberg of "fake encounters" and custodial killings that have continued since the insurgency erupted against New Delhi's rule.

A report by Human Rights Watch last October listed dozens of cases in which people had been allegedly abducted and murdered.

Among the most notorious was the March 2000 killings of five men in the southern village of Pathirabal. The army said they were foreign terrorists who massacred 37 Sikh civilians.

A federal investigation found that the men were civilians who had been kidnapped by the army and shot.

Five soldiers were charged but the case is stalled because the army wants the men court martialled rather than tried in a civilian court. The five are still on the job.

Human rights groups estimate about 8,000 Kashmiri Muslims have disappeared since 1989, most after being seized by security forces with broad powers of arrest in the scenic state of snowcapped mountains.

Yasin Malik, the chief of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), has threatened to go on a "fast until death" if Indian authorities fail to end human rights violations.

"It is a fact that people are being detained and killed. It has been happening since India pumped in troops to crush our resistance," says Malik, a former militant who has renounced violence.

He called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to "ensure implementation" of his promise last year of "zero tolerance" for rights violations.

In addition, there is a vast network of army camps, police posts and jails.

The latest abuse allegations are a public relations blow to India as it seeks to pursue a peace process with Pakistan launched in 2004. Six decades of hostility fuelled by claims to all of Kashmir have sparked two of their three wars.

"It is clear the peace process and killing innocent Kashmiris cannot go together," Malik said.

Srinagar, Sunday, AFP