‘Will they punish killers? My son was like a phoulvun gulab (blossoming rose)’

The story of Nadihal’s tragedy,in fact,begins at the entrance of this village. Seven kilometers from Baramula town when a sharp left turn takes a link road towards Nadihal,a green flag,a few placards over three fresh graves next to several old epitaphs detailing the sacrifices of militants stand prominent. Shahzad,Shafi and Riyaz have been given a place for burial in this little ‘martyrs graveyard’ of the village but unlike militants,the story of their brutal killing by the army has a twist. They were not remotely linked to Kashmir’s separatist movement and in fact they had been lured to the Line of Control by the army to work against militants. Though the separatists embraced their ”sacrifice’’ and the valley mourned the pain of their families,the killing didn’t provoke mass protests across Kashmir – a total contrast from the earlier cases of fake encounters. The reason may not be pronounced loud and open but people do talk in whispers,blaming the three victims for ”crossing the line of betrayal’’ and ”trusting the army’’.

Why did these three men agree readily to travel to the far off army post for work? The answer lays just a few hundred metres ahead in the village. The houses of the three men are situated in three different mohallas of Nadihal – almost equidistant from the village centre where the link road divides into smaller lanes – as if grief needed to be spread across Nadihal. Shahzad Khan (27) used to live in a small mud and brick house with his parents and five younger siblings. He was married to Jabeena and had a three-year-old son Shahid. ”He was desperate to help the family. He worked very hard and there were days when he didn’t even keep a penny for himself,’’ Shahzad’s mother Ayesha wails. ”He was my first child. I lived seeing his smiling face. The brutal assassins lured him to far off mountains and killed him. How helpless he must have been when the army men killed him?’’ She says she feels the pain that her son went through as bullets made a sieve of his chest. ”I see him pleading. I hear his desperate screams. He had bullet wounds even in the back of his knees. How can I live now? This pain will never go’’. Shahzad’s father Ghulam Mohammad Khan sits silently,scratching his grey beard while his other children watch their mother wail with moist eyes. Shahzad’s wife Jabeena looks lost as she holds her son – little Shahid close to her chest. ”He (Shahzad) left at 9 that day. He had no money and asked for twenty rupees. I didn’t have change and gave him fifty. He said he will be back by the evening,’’ she recalls. ”When he didn’t come,I tried his phone. It was switched off’’. In a corner,a bearded young man with a skull cap is Fayaz Ahmad Wani. A close friend of Shahzad,Wani was pivotal to help police crack this blind case. The day Shahzad and the other two men went missing on April 29; Shahzad had spoken to him (Wani) on phone and told him that he was with counter-insurgent Bashir Ahmad Lone. ”He (Shahzad) told me that Bashir has hired me for two thousand rupees a day to work with the army and he is on his way to Kalaroos,’’ Wani recalls. The police immediately analysed the call details of Lone and cracked the entire conspiracy. Lone had been assigned the job to find three men for the fake encounter by his friends – a Territorial Army jawan Abbas Hussain Shah and an army source Hameed – who later accompanied Lone in to Kalaroos where they handed over these three men to Major Upinder of 4 Rajput unit of the army. They were paid Rs 1.5 lakh,two bottles of whisky and two Beer bottles by the Major for their services. Shahzad and the other two men were killed in a staged encounter later that night at Sona Pindi on the Line of Control.

Though the family doesn’t speak about Shahzad’s past,the villagers say that he had been working for the army earlier as well. ”People here always thought he was a mukhbir (informer). He was friends with the army and helped them too,’’ a villager says but requests anonymity. ”The Army didn’t even spare him. Even he couldn’t earn their friendship. At last,he paid for being a Kashmiri’’.

A few hundred metres away,the house of Shafi Lone stands out because his mother is wailing inside. The family lives in a half constructed single storey house after the 2005 earthquake turned them homeless. Shafi’s father Abdul Rashid Lone is a farmer. ”It’s been a hell ever since he left home that day. We went everywhere looking for him. We went to police – we checked with his friends – we went to search for him even to Srinagar. We didn’t even suspect anything like this could happen,’’ he said. Shafi too was the oldest among six siblings and had been working as a manual labourer till his father bought him a small tractor. ”There was not much work for the tractor so he would go for manual labour to help me run the household,’’ he said. ”He knew I would never let him go to work with army so he didn’t let me know. Bashir lured them and then sold them to army’’. Shafi’s mother Zahida is devastated. ”He had a mark on his left arm and the armymen had made a big wound at that place with bullets to hide that,’’ she says. ”He was a child and had not even started shaving as yet. They (army) had painted his face black to make it look like beard’’. A neighbour takes out his cell phone to show a video clip of the body and points towards the face which looks visibly painted black to make a beard.

The story of Riyaz Ahmad Lone is so tragic that even the adjectives for pain fail to encompass its intensity. He was 20 and had been working at a car workshop as a labourer for three years. ”He would get Rs 2,500 a month and would give us fifteen hundred rupees. That was our only income,’’ Riyaz’s father Yousuf Lone says. ”I am old and unable to work now so he had to take care of his seven siblings. He knew he has grown up sisters and he was desperate’’. He says he understands why his son agreed to work with the army. ”Two thousand is a large sum. He must have thought he will be able to repair this house’’. The family lives in a shack where the windows have been shut by covering them with polythene and tin sheets. The room where Riyaz’s parents mourn with relatives and neighbours has a rough floor,covered with a thin sheet. Riyaz’s mother Naseema says that after her son went missing,she went to meet Bashir and sought his help. ”We knew he knows police and government and thought he may be able to help. He (Bashir) said he can’t help,’’ she recalls. ”Would they (government) punish the killers? My son was like a phoulvun gulab (blossoming rose)’’.

The inside story of Machil fake encounter

How was this fake encounter organized? The interrogation of the four persons especially the two main kingpins Territorial Army jawan Abbas Hussain Shah and army source Hameed has left no doubt that the officers of the 4 Rajput battalion of the army were in a hurry to stage a fake encounter on the Line of Control to secure a unit citation and cash award days before they had to shift out of the valley. The fake encounter took place in the intervening night of April,29 and 30 while the unit shifted out of valley within a week.

Abbas Hussain Shah had been in constant touch with ”Major Upender’’ ever since he took over as G2 at 19 Div Headquarters at Baramulla. Shah said that his job was to roam around the Baramulla town and adjoining villages to sniff for any useful information. ”Major sahib would always ask me to arrange sources. Once I met Hameed and he wanted some liquor – I arranged it and then convinced him to become Major sahib’s source. We gave him a new name doctor sahib and he started working for army,’’ Abbas told The Indian Express in an interview. ”In April,Major sahib asked to arrange few young men and told me that we have to send them across to Pakistan to bring weapons and track (group of militant) which we could trap then. Major sahib promised to pay them and I asked Hameed for help’’. Hameed had earlier introduced Bashir Ahmad Lone,a counter-insurgent from Nadihal village in Baramulla to Abbas. ”Bashir’s nephew was in army school and he wanted his fee to be waved off and I took him to my officers for help. He was Hameed’s friend and later became my friend too,’’ Abbas said. Thus Hameed talked to Bashir to arrange few men for the army.

The three met in General Cariappa park in Baramulla town and Bashir informed Shah and Hameed that he has arranged three men from his village and has offered them Rs 2,000 a day for work with the army at the LoC. The trip to Kalaroos was scheduled for April,27. Bashir arranged a Tata Sumo and along with Hameed and the three youngmen traveled to the 4 Rajput camp in Kalaroos. ”Major asked us to go back home and come on April 29th as the weather was not good. On April,29,Abbas accompanied us,’’ Hameed said. ”They (the three men) were happy that they will be paid good sum for the work. They were talking on their cell phone and joking among each other. Abbas bought some coke and chips to eat enroute. At Kupwara,he took us to a hotel where we all had Kanti (fried boneless mutton) with naan. We even smoked charas’’. Hameed told the interrogators that Major was waiting for two army vehicles at Kalaroos. ”He asked the three men to get into one truck while he asked us to board the other. He asked Bashir to leave along with the Sumo though,’’ he said. Next morning,Abbas and Hameed were given 1.5 lakh cash by the major along with two bottles of whisky and two Beer bottles as their reward. Hammed and Abbas had,however,been separated during the night by the major who took the TA jawan Abbas along with him. The army had taken the three men – Shahzad Ahmad Khan,Mohammad Shafi Lone and Riyaz Ahmad Lone – to Sona Pindi on the Line of Control and shot them dead in a staged encounter and later dubbed them as unidentified infiltrating militants. The army had also claimed to have recovered five AK rifles,a large cache of ammunition and Pakistani currency from their possession. The police say that the unit has received Rs 6 lakh as cash award for this operation.

How did the police crack the case? The police was already suspicious about the authenticity of the encounters on the Line of Control and had been refusing to file FIR about the army claims regarding the encounters unless the army produced the bodies of the militants. In a similar case,Trehgam police had intercepted and arrested a Special police official Imran Joo along with two boys from Kupwara while he (Joo) was taking them for a fake encounter in Keran sector. Then International Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice – a rights group – had published a report – Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked,and Mass Graves in Kashmir that documented 2,943 unidentified bodies across 55 villages in Bandipora,Baramulla,and Kupwara districts of Kashmir who were killed by the forces in suspicious circumstances and buried without ever ascertaining their identity. This fake encounter,however,was exposed by a mere coincidence. On May 10,the families of the three men in Nadihal had registered a missing report with the police Station Panzla in Sopore Police district. The investigators had just one clue: the families had told them that they left home with a local counter-insurgent Bashir Ahmad Lone that day and never returned. Shahzad had called his friend Fayaz Ahmad Wani that day and told him he was with Bashir and was going for work with army in Kalaroos. Wani had informed Shahzad’s family. The police immediately analysed the call details of the victims and Bashir and found out that they had all gone to Kalaroos ahead of Kupwara through the tower location of their respective cell phones. Thus Bashir was picked up on May 21 and subsequently police arrested Hameed too. Abbas’s case was a bit complicated as he was a serving soldier. Thus police officially sought his custody from the Commandant of his 161 TA battalion. On May,27,Abbas was finally arrested.

Implications of this expose:

This fake encounter took place at the Line of Control and these three men were dubbed as unidentified infiltrating militants. The police has already prevented another similar fake encounter when they intercepted two young men from Kupwara who were being taken to Keran sector on the LoC. The police say they are probing all the LoC encounters in which the identity of the killed ”militants’’ has not been ascertained before their burial. Thus the fake encounter expose has put a question mark on the army’s claims regarding the infiltration from across the LoC which has far reaching international implications.

Besides,this expose has already hit the image of the army here in Kashmir and if army provides its institutional support to the erring officials to prevent arrest by the police,it will further damage its position.

What will happen next?

In the past,the army has resisted any move by the J-K police to get the custody of the accussed army officials including the two highly publicized fake encounters – 2007 Ganderbal fake encounter and 2000 Pathribal fake encounter.

In 2007,a major fake encounter involving Rashtriya Rifles and J-K Police’s officers and men at Ganderbal abducted and killed five villagers and dubbed them as foreign militants. A Senior Superintendent of Police,his deputy and five other policemen were arrested. The army officers whose involvement was established during police investigations were never handed over to police for questioning.

When the Pathribal fake encounter in March 2000 was first reported,it was billed as a genuine anti-militancy operation. Within hours of this encounter,the then Union Home Secretary Kamal Panday and even the then Union Home minister L. K. Advani came on record saying that the army and police have gunned down five Lashkar terrorists,responsible for the massacre of 36 Sikhs in Chittisinghpora. The facts of this fake encounter would have never been investigated if there had not been a public agitation. After initial enquiry,the case was finally handed over to CBI who not only concluded that the encounter was stage managed but also charge-sheeted five army officers. Ten years later,there is still a debate going on whether the CBI has the authority to probe the army. Meanwhile,these army officers have even been promoted during the pendency of active investigation. The relief provided to the families of these five villagers was Rs 1 lakh each.

In 2005,J-K Police investigations led to the expose of a large-scale fake surrender. Forty-one villagers from Chrar-e-Sharief area were taken to Delhi and then kept in army custody for six long months only to take part in a stage-managed surrender ceremony in front of a Corps commander and DGP. The IGP,Kashmir wrote letters to the army,clearly saying that two officers including a brigadier were involved in this case but nobody knows what happened later. Nobody told these villagers or their families as to what happened to this probe. There was not even an apology,not to talk of compensation to these people who had to go through hell during those six months of illegal confinement.

Though Defence minister A K Antony as well as the army top brass has vowed to take strict action in the case,there is little hope in valley that the erring army officials would be ever punished. The army has not handed over its officers or men sought by police for their role two major fake encounters and a fake surrender that took place in last ten years. In fact,top J-K police officers too think it is highly unlikely that the army would hand over the accused officers to police for questioning. ”They will invoke Armed Forces Speical Powers Act (AFSPA) and will say that the army will conduct a probe internally,’’ a senior officer said. The AFSPA provides a legal protection to the soldiers while conducting counter-insurgent operations. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is,however,confident of the Army’s cooperation. “This time the assurance of full cooperation has come from no less than the Defence Minister (A K Antony),” he said.

Pointed out that the Army had earlier never handed over its officials even after the police chargesheeted them in similar fake encounter cases,Abdullah said: “Maybe this is a test case.” A senior J-K government official involved with this case told The Indian Express that as ”this fake encounter is a deliberate criminal act with an intention to murder innocent civilians for monetary and other benefits,it cannot be termed as a CI operation and does not fall in the colour of duty’’. This,he said,”will provide the state government to plead that the army officials involved in this fake encounter cannot hide behind the protective shield of Armed Forces Special Powers Act’’.

How will this case proceed now will be determined by the response of the army to police’s formal request to handover the officers of 4 Rajput to them for questioning.