The phenomenon of renegade militants has been extensively documented by Human Rights Watch. Renegades are former militants who have surrendered and changed sides to the Indian forces. Since the 1989 insurgency in Kashmir, renegades have been used for extrajudicial executions of militants (besides human right activists, journalists and other civilians) and later conveniently dismissed as "intergroup rivalries". Many of these groups have been responsible for grave human rights abuses, including summary executions, torture, and illegal detention as well as election-related intimidation of voters. They are never arrested or prosecuted and go scot-free.
In 1997, the Director General of Police Gurbachan Jagat acknowledged that the continued services of the renegades had become counter-productive in view of their excesses; an estimated 5000 renegades were reportedly 'rehabilitated' as Special Police Officers (SPO) in the State police and many others were absorbed in the security forces. The present number of renegade militants continues to be significant and the estimates vary; In 1999, Gurbachan Jagat acknowledged that there were 1,200 renegades in the payroll of the government; According to a renegade representative Javed Shah, the number of renegades exceeded 2,000; The 2001 US State Department Report on Human Rights in India estimates that there are about 3000 such renegades operating in Kashmir who remain the most dreaded group and continue to engage in excesses.
Chattisinghpora massacre in 2000
In July 2000, the DNA test by the Central Forensic Laboratory, Kolkata, has established
that the five persons killed by Indian security forces in an
"encounter" in Panchalthan following the massacre of 35 Sikhs in
Chattisinghpora in Kashmir Valley in March 2000, were in fact civilians and not "foreign militants" as claimed by the forces. In the light of
the latest findings, it is worthwhile to re-examine the mystery of the
Chattisinghpora massacre and the possible reasons behind the subterfuge
by the Indian forces and the related phenomenon of renegade militants
used by India as the secret army in Kashmir, thus placing in
perspective the almost daily killings in Kashmir including communal
killings which tend to generate paranoia. It will be argued that the
series of unexplained killings by unidentified gunmen where no militant
outfit has claimed responsibility, could very well have been engineered
by India using renegades and that only an impartial inquiry into these
killings can shed light on the true identity of the killers.
The set of events following the Sikh massacre highlight the ruthlessness and possible subterfuge by the Indian forces.
In March 2000, around the time of US President Bill Clinton's visit
to India, 35 Sikh men were murdered in Chattisinghpora village in
Kashmir by unidentified gunmen. India blamed Pakistan sponsored
"foreign" militants, while many Kashmiris blamed Indian sponsored
renegades. Renegades are former militants who have surrendered and
changed sides to the Indian forces.
Subsequently, five "terrorists" were liquidated by the Indian
forces and identified as "foreign militants" responsible for the
massacre; The bodies were quickly buried without a post-mortem; Clothes
and personal items were left burning near the burial site.
Curiously, around the same time, seventeen Muslims had
strangely gone missing from the villages around Chattisinghpora, some
of them kidnapped by armed men before witnesses; Soon, the relatives of
the missing men identified the half-burnt personal items at Panchalthan
as belonging to their relatives.
The relatives of the five murdered villagers held a series of
demonstrations for public exhuming of the bodies; A crowd of five
thousand unarmed civilians at Brakpora was fired upon by the police;
Nine more men died; When the bodies were finally exhumed, they were
discovered to have been burnt and defaced, but curiously dressed in
brand new army fatigues. They were identified by the relatives as the
local villagers who went missing. Initial attempts in DNA testing of
the exhumed bodies were compromised by fudging of the DNA samples in a
cover-up attempt by the authorities; The latest results indicate that
the five persons killed by the Indian forces were indeed civilians and
that Indian forces engaged in a deliberate subterfuge to portray them
as "foreign" militants responsible for the Sikh massacre.
The Pandian Commission investigated the firing at Brakpora and
pronounced that three police officers be tried for murder, however no
action has been taken against them till date; No judicial inquiry into
the Sikh massacre itself has been conducted till date despite repeated
announcements.
Based on the above information, there is good reason to suspect
that Indian forces may have had something to hide about the
Chattisinghpora massacre and hence killed innocent villagers at
Panchalthan and made them scapegoats; Chattisinghpora may very well
have been engineered by the Indian forces using renegade militants for
political gains during Clinton's visit.
The army-renegade nexus has been suspected in many other prominent killings before.
Jalil Andrabi, the human rights activist was abducted by the
paramilitary and renegades in March 1996 in the presence of
eye-witnesses and tortured to death in custody. Despite the
Government's initial denials of the army's involvement, the Special
Investigation Team identified Major Avtar Singh in April 1997 as the
person responsible for the death; however the accused major was
released with no punishment.
H.N. Wanchoo, the noted human rights activist had
documented and filed writ petitions for hundreds of custodial deaths in
1992; Being a Pandit, his petitions were an embarrassment to the
government. He was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in December
1992; Although the government claimed that the persons responsible
belonged to the militant outfit Jamiat-ul Mujahidin, human rights
activists who investigated the case have alleged that the militants of
that group were released from jail on condition that they kill Wanchoo .
Following his death, none of the cases were heard in the court and
lawyers attempting to get the cases listed have reportedly found that
many of the files of these cases were now missing from the High Court
premises.
Zafar Mehraj, a veteran Kashmiri journalist was shot
and critically injured as he returned from an interview with Koko
Parray, the head of the state-sponsored paramilitary group Ikhwan-ul
Muslimoon. The evidence strongly suggests the involvement of
state-sponsored militia forces.
Dr. Farooq Ahmad Ashai, chief of orthopaedics and a
human rights activist who had spoken against the government was killed
by gunshots from a CRPF bunker. The government stated that he had been
killed in 'crossfire', despite evidence to the contrary. Dr. Abdul Ahad Guru, a surgeon who had treated torture victims was killed by unidentified gunmen.
Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq and Abdul Ghani Lone, two
Kashmiri activists were killed by unidentified gunmen on 21 May 1990
and 2002 respectively. In both cases, the government blamed militants
while Kashmiris blamed Indian sponsored renegades.
Communal killings:
Though militancy is mainly concentrated in the Valley and is
largely non-communal, some militant outfits operate in the Jammu region
and wage a communal campaign. Since 1990, an officially estimated
19,866 people have been killed in J&K, half of them civilians,
including 982 Hindus and Sikhs as of 1999.
In the communal killings in the Jammu region, 307 Hindus and 377
Muslims have been killed in the Doda and Rajouri districts as of 1998,
according to official reports;
Hindu fundamentalism by the local armed Village Defence Committee (VDC)
backed by the Army and terrorism by Muslim insurgents in defense of the
Muslim community, have fed each other. While many of the communal
killings have been perpetrated by the militants, the hand of the
renegades cannot be ruled out in some of them. There is compelling
reason to suspect the Indian sponsored renegades in the Chattisinghpora
massacre, as we have already seen. In August 2000 killing of 35
civilians including 23 Amarnath pilgrims in Pahalgam, it has come to
light that most of the people were killed in fact by the panic-stricken
CRPF jawans who continued firing for another 20 minutes after the two
suspected militants were killed;
a commission under Lt.Gen. Mukherjee found 17 police officers
responsible. The hand of the renegades cannot be ruled out in the
massacre of 23 Kashmiri Pandits in 1998 at Wandhama by unidentified
gunmen; The All Party Hurriyat Conference condemned the massacre,
called for investigation by Amnesty and observed a protest strike;
subsequently Amnesty's request for investigation was refused by the
government.
In early 1990, a few prominent Kashmiri Pandits were killed by
the JKLF for political reasons; Though the JKLF tried to explain that
the killings of Pandits were not communal, the murders caused a scare
among the minority Hindu community. The rise of new militant groups,
some warnings in anonymous posters and some unexplained killings of
innocent members of the community contributed to an atmosphere of
insecurity for the Kashmiri Pandits, which led to the exodus of most of
the estimated 162,500 Hindus in the Valley, including the entire Kashmiri Pandit
community in March. Some of the unexplained killings could very well
have been due to renegades. Joint reconciliation efforts by members
from both Muslim and Pandit communities were actively discouraged by
Jagmohan. There have been charges that this exodus was encouraged by Jagmohan, who has a reputation for having anti-Muslim sentiments,
to enable India to have a "free hand" in dealing with the Muslims in
the Valley, a charge which Jagmohan has denied. A thorough, independent
enquiry alone can show if this exodus was entirely unavoidable. An
estimated 36,000 Hindu families and 20,000 Muslim families (as of 1993)
have fled the Valley and many of them still languish in the refugee
camps in Jammu and Azad Kashmir, being displayed by India and Pakistan
respectively for propaganda. Given the well documented phenomenon of Indian sponsored
renegades and given the subterfuge of the Indian forces in incidents
such as Panchalthan and the killing of Andrabi, one can see a pattern
of impunity on the part of Indian forces - extrajudicial executions,
denial and dismissal of the killings as "encounter killings" or
conveniently placing the blame on "foreign militants". Only an
impartial investigation by an independent agency can find the truth in
such attacks by unidentified gunmen, where no militant outfit has
claimed responsibility - whether separatist militants or renegades were
involved.
Pakistan's support for the insurgency has been well documented by Human Rights Watch;
The JKLF admitted in a press release in 1990 that ISI had financed the
operations of the JKLF and the Hizb. In November 1995, a BBC
documentary programme showed evidence of camps in Azad Kashmir and
Pakistan, supported by the Jamaat-i-Islami (political wing of the
Hizb), where fighters were trained and openly professed their intention
of fighting in Kashmir.
Pakistan favours the pro-Pakistan militant group Hizbul Mujahedin and
has played a role in decimating the JKLF, an indigenous and secular
pro-independence group. However, there have also been instances when
Indian accusations have proved false; For instance, in the Indian
Defence Review of July 1989, one of India's top defence specialists,
K.Subrahmanyam, cited the existence of a secret Pakistani plan to start
a Kashmiri uprising, code-named 'Operation Topac', that the late
General Zia-ul-Haq reportedly set in motion. However, this plan was
later shown to be false and concocted by Indian analysts as a
hypothetical exercise, a fact Subrahmanyam later acknowledged . Curiously, Operation Topac continues to be quoted by Indian officials including the Indian Embassy.
Kashmiris are alienated from both countries given brutal repression by India and violence by pro-Pakistan militants. In a recent poll by MORI [BBC News, 31 May], only 9% and 13% of people of Kashmir Valley, where the discontent and insurgency is concentrated, have preferred to join India and Pakistan respectively Caught in the crossfire between militants and Indian security forces, Kashmir continues to bleed.
