The Konan Poshpora limbo is a symbol of the state’s failure to consolidate peace in J&K.
The silences that surround the Konan Poshpora rape allegations were thrown into sharper relief by the statement of S.M. Yasin, Kupwara deputy commissioner at the time of the incident. The first government official to visit the villages and record the testimonies of the victims in 1991, Yasin says he was threatened and offered promotions to induce him to change his report. In a letter to the divisional commissioner (DC) soon after the incident, Yasin had said he was “ashamed to put in black and white” the brutalities that had taken place. In the 23 years since, the Konan Poshpora investigation has become a case study in official denial and the failure of justice in J&K.
On February 24, 1991, soldiers of 4 Rajputana Rifles circled the villages of Konan and Poshpora in Kupwara district for a cordon-and-search operation, during which they allegedly raped several women. While an initial police investigation confirmed the rapes, a fresh inquiry was set up in July 1991, which closed the case as “untraced” in October 1991. The case was dealt twin blows by the report of the DC, who raised questions about Yasin’s account and a Press Council of India report, compiled at the behest of the army, which concluded the whole case was a “massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups”. Since then, the DC has claimed that chunks of his statement were excised by the government and the PCI report has been criticised as shoddy and biased. In June 2013, soon after the police had filed a closure report, a Kupwara district court ordered that the case be reopened and fresh investigations take place. But even this moment of hope soon faded, with the police chasing ever-receding deadlines to submit their findings and reports of state officials trying to bribe or intimidate victims into silence.
The mass rapes of Konan Poshpora have become part of a grim folklore in J&K. Ensuring that justice is done in cases such as this one would have been a way to address the deep hurt in the Valley. The relative calm of the last few years, which saw a fall in militant violence, was an opportunity to do so. The government should have used this moment to build trust through more responsive processes of justice. The Konan Poshpora limbo shows how it has failed.
