The Plight of Children Detained in Kashmir
Boys in an upscale locality in Srinagar say police have been rounded up many of their friends during night raids. Photo by Taha Zahoor.
SRINAGAR, Indian-administered Kashmir — There is palpable tension as we drive towards Anchar in the outskirts of Srinagar, capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
The area erupted with protests following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial decision on Aug. 5 to strip India’s only Muslim-majority region Kashmir of its limited autonomy, which had been guaranteed in the Indian constitution. The former state has been downgraded into two union territories under direct rule by New Delhi in an attempt to end terrorism and separatism, Modi said. His Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has campaigned for years on a promise to resettle Hindus in the Himalayan region disputed with Pakistan.
The roads are empty. The shops are closed. Very few vehicles and people are out, except columns of security personnel deployed to enforce order and a curfew. The roads have been barricaded with concertina wires, forcing any cars and motorbikes through checkpoints.
We are looking for three teenagers: 19-year-old Umar, 18-year-old Asif and 16-year-old Moomin, reportedly detained by the police in a night raid on Aug. 8.
We ask a boy walking on the roadside about the whereabouts of the three youth. He turns out to be Asif, one of the boys arrested and released subsequently.
Asif takes us to the house of his friends Umar and Moomin. The two brothers were detained by the police with him. Umar and Moomin were not home, so we meet their father, Manzoor Ahmad Dar, a carpenter. He tells us that his house was raided by a joint team of Jammu and Kashmir police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
“They (the police) came in the night looking for my elder son Umar, the boys who were sleeping were woken up, and they took all three of them,” Dar says. “The boys were wearing shorts and couldn’t even get themselves dressed when they were taken away.”
Asif had been staying with the family while his house underwent construction.
An estimated 2,000-5,000 people have been arrested since Aug. 5, according to government estimates. Many of those arrested are teenagers. Human rights organizations say the numbers of detentions are likely higher.
Under India’s Public Safety Act, enacted during British colonial times to maintain order and squash resistance to government rule, a person can be detained for up to two years without a trial. Some of those arrested have been transferred to jails outside the locality or even outside the state, without their family’s knowledge.
Dar says simultaneous raids were conducted by the police in three neighboring residential colonies, arresting 15 other boys and setting off protests.
“The police used force to dispel the crowds,” Dar says. “I was beaten up. I went to the hospital the next day for the treatment of my injured leg. The doctors initially thought I was bitten by a dog. I had to tell them that the injuries were caused by police beating.”
Moomin, the 16-year-old, was released after two days. Asif was released on the third day while Umar was released after 10 days. But for the next five days, police asked the boys to report at the police station every morning and evening.
“I didn’t pay any money for getting my sons released,” Dar says. “But I had to pay daily 100 Indian rupees (about $1.40) for food expenses for each child in the lock up.”
Asif says they were not harassed or beaten in detention but constantly asked whether they pelted stones on the police, a common protest tactic in Kashmir.
“Police were only asking us, are you stone pelters?” said Asif. “They didn’t beat us [in jail] though. The beating we took was at the time when we were taken by the police.”
Arrests of children a “preventative” measure
According to a report filed by the four-judge Juvenile Justice Committee of Jammu and Kashmir’s top court, 144 children under the age of 18 were rounded up by police between Aug. 5 and Sep. 23, with some as young as nine years old.
The lawyers defending the minors insist the number of juveniles detained by the police runs in the thousands. With no fresh cases against the boys, they are mostly rounded up on the basis of their previous record, Shafqat Hussain, a lawyer defending young boys detained in the last three months says.
“I have filed more than 200 petitions in the high court in the last three months after [Aug. 5] about young boys who have been detained,” he says. “They are innocent… There is ‘lawlessness’ in Kashmir.”
Hussain says he has witnessed hundreds of boys detained in police stations across Kashmir Valley.
“We don’t have any access to them,” he says. “We only come to know about the cases when the detained boys are brought to the court… up till that time the boys are kept under illegal confinement for days together. They are taken to juvenile homes after the court finds they are minors.”
The Director General of Jammu and Kashmir police Dilbagh Singh defended the arrests of children by saying it was an “immediate preventive” measure “in order to protect life and property of the people and avoid any problem that could breach peace and public tranquility,” according to the report. He said no child had been detained illegally and laws governing the detention of minors, that they must be detained in separate juvenile facilities, are being followed.
To see for ourselves, we travelled to Natipora in Srinagar, 20 kilometers from Anchar, to meet 14-year-old Adil, one of the minor boys arrested and released by the police. His name has been changed to protect him and his family.
Over the last three months, Natipora has seen the police arrest many other boys and protestors, mostly those who threw stones at the police.
A group of local teenagers help us meet with Adil at a playground.
According to the list submitted by the police to the court, Adil was arrested on Sep. 5 and released on the same day. But the 14-year-old tells us that he has been arrested three times in the last three months and was once kept in police lock-up for five days.
“[The police] woke me up from my home during the night and took me with them,” Adil says. “My father told the policemen not to beat me. The police told us they have the video of us pelting stones, and they showed the video to me.”
Adil says while most policemen were polite, some were harsh on the detained boys—14 total, including Adil.
“The police were asking us to give names of other boys from the area, but we told them we don’t know anything,” Adil says. “The police officer on duty did not beat me, but one of the policemen in his escort party beat me.”
Adil’s father went to the police station several times to meet him and plead for his release. Adil says he was released only after his father signed a bond. He was threatened with charges under the Public Safety Act. This is his third arrest this year. On the first, he was detained overnight, the second for three days, and the third for five days.
But the police say a lot misinformation is being circulated about detention of young boys in Kashmir.
“Detentions are done on solid grounds,’’ Singh, the police director, says. “Four out of five people detained are released. We are not fond of keeping people unnecessarily.’’
He said after verification and counseling, the boys have been set free.
Taha Zahoor is a Kashmiri, Srinagar-based journalist. His name has been changed to protect his identity.