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An article in today's Hindu by Harsh Mander on Kunan Poshpora incident which I had not heard before made me write this post.
The Delhi gang rape incident was an unfortunate incident. The incident caused outrage across the nations with protests, candlelight vigils and much more. The anger against the government and the police was visible. It did ensure that the government takes some proactive steps. But I strongly feel they were more symbolic in nature.
If we analyze a few of the recent activism of the citizens of our country, one can easily infer that these were urban centric. Media did its job to perfection (TRP is one of the driving factor) giving adequate coverage to all these so called movements. There are a lot of such incidents which go unnoticed for the simple reason that it occurs in a remote rural village.
Kunan Poshpora is one such gang rape incident which happened 22 years back which will stir the conscience of any individual. Wikipedia description of the incident is as follows:
According to reports, on February 23, 1991 at approximately 11:00PM soldiers from the 4th Rajputana Rifles of Indian Army cordoned off the village of Kunan Poshpora to conduct a search operation. The 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. In his final report, he stated that the soldiers "behaved like wild beasts" and described the attack as :A large number of armed personnel entered into the houses of villagers and at gunpoint they gang-raped 23 ladies, without any consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy etc… there was a hue and cry in the whole village.
The shocking fact is till date not a single person has been punished. The government tried to cover up the incident as a mass conspiracy involving militants and the entire population of the twin villages.
Harsh Mander whom I quoted in the beginning was one of the member of Centre for Policy Analysis(CPA) team which visited the place recently says: "Many women wept wordlessly. An old man whose aged mother was raped and who became permanently disabled by the torture he suffered that night, cried out 'When one woman was raped in Delhi, all of India lit candles for 15 days. But where is the justice for us?'"
CPA team’s experience and findings are as follows:
It is difficult to accept the arguement that the Kunan-Poshpura incident is a case of a mass conspiracy involving militants and the entire population of the twin illages.We found that both men and women vividly remembered the violence and torture as if it had taken place just a day before. Both women and men broke down when narrating their trauma, the women crying inconsolably before the women members of the CPA team. Team members were struck by the intensity of their anguish.
The state human rights commission on Oct 26th 2011 concluded that Rajputana rifles had raped women and ordered the state to pay 2 lakh rupees each, and recommended that the criminal case be repoened and headed by a SIT.
The government offered money through cash and not by cheque to victims with the intention of not acknowledging that mass gang rapes had taken place.
Despite the orders of High court, in May 2013, a sessions court in Kupwara recommended closure. Finally on June 18, 2013, the Judicial Magistrate Kupwara J. A. Geelani, while dismissing th conclusions made by the police, returned the case file to the police, asking for “further investigation to unravel the identity of those who happen to be perpetrators”.
Do we have the courage to answer uncomfortable questions.
Why does the government and media ignore these incidents?
Is it because they happen in remote villages in Kashmir or a north eastern state(Irom Chanu Sharmila)?
Will the media play its role as they did in Nirbhaya case or Jessica case?
Will the democratic government at the state and centre execute its responsibilites?
Will justice be ever delivered to the victims?
The answer to these questions is anybody's guess.
