Raids at night, handbills by day: Army siege in South Kashmir escalates after special status revoked

Army officials in Srinagar denied knowledge of raids and said they were only concerned with ‘people within the ambit of terrorism’.

As soldiers strode up the street, the crowd that had gathered at a shopfront in Arihal, a village in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, melted away. The men in uniform were handing out flyers printed inUrdu. “Article 370 aur 35A ko badlaav karne ke kitne phayede hai,” the headline declared. The many advantages of changing Articles 370 and 35A.

Together, these two constitutional provisions had guaranteed special status and autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir and reserved specific rights for permanent residents of the state, including the right to own land. That came to an end on August 5, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced the Centre was scrapping Article 35A, effectively nullifying Article 370 and dividing the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories.

The flyers handed out by the army made 11 points. The new regime would usher in the “right to education”, including compulsory education for women, midday meals at government schools and new coaching centres. Under “health”, the flyer promised the implementation of Ayushman Yojana and new hospitals. Under “tourism”, new hotels and tourist centres.

The list went on. The development of backward classes would be prioritised. There would be new factories and industries. There would be Central supervision of law and order and of development, which would turn Kashmir into Pondicherry. There would be a crackdown on corruption and the implementation of the Right to Information Act, which would presumably replace the Jammu and Kashmir RTI Act already in place. There would be property rights for women. There would be Central largesse worth Rs 1 lakh crore to meet “daily needs”. There would be soaring land prices.

As the soldiers disappeared down the street, the crowd regrouped at the pend or shopfront. Behind them, the shops were shuttered in protest against the government’s decision. Eager voices told Scroll.in what life had been like in the weeks since Article 370 and 35A were gutted.

They accused security forces, especially the army, of conducting night raids: “They’ve beaten up all the boys, old people, women”, “they’ve destroyed rations, mixing rice and oil”, “they’ve broken the mosques as well, forcing their way in.”

Over the last few years, the four districts of South Kashmir – Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam and Anantnag – have become the centre of a new phase of local militancy, prompting the Indian Army to move in closer. Villages here are marked by violence and gunfights, by the names of local militants who once lived there. In February, a suicide bomber burst out on the national highway at Lethpora in Pulwama district, ramming into a CRPF convoy and killing 40.

The arrests and detentions reported in other parts of the Valley have also spread to South Kashmir in the last few weeks. But in these rural districts, residents and the army have been locked in an intimate struggle over the past few years, settling into a local rhythm of search operations and military crackdowns. No gunfights have been reported in South Kashmir over the last three weeks. But, going by local accounts in Pulwama district, the army crackdown has intensified.

“The army comes at night, sometimes they don’t even have have police with them,” said one lanky youth at the shopfront in Arihal. “First they cover the mosques so that an alarm cannot be raised [from the loudspeakers] there, then they raid. They come to beat up people, 12 am, 1 am at night.”

According to residents, there were raids on July 27, August 3 and August 4. About 200 private vehicles were vandalised, residents of Arihal alleged. One young man who drove a Tavera taxi said his vehicle was vandalised by security forces on August 3, when it was parked at the Arihal bus stand. “They told me to take the wind out of the tyres, then they took my phone and beat me,” he claimed. To collect his phone, the young man alleged, the security personnel asked him to go to the nearby Rashtriya Rifles camp, where he was beaten again.

But his troubles had begun before that. In July, the police had arrested his 18-year-old brother and taken him to the District Police Lines at Pulwama, the taxi driver alleged. “When I went to visit him two days before Eid, they said they had taken him to Srinagar,” he said. “At the Srinagar Central Jail, we were told they have taken him to Agra. When we came back from Srinagar to the police lines in Pulwama, they told us they had booked him under the PSA [Public Safety Act].”

The taxi driver could only speculate why his brother was detained. “They catch people on suspicion,” he said. “If anyone raises their voice, they take him. They felt this boy is going to raise his voice so they took him.”

His brother’s arrest may have been precipitated by events that took place in June. On June 7, Imran Ahmad Bhat, a Jaish-e-Mohammad militant from Arihal, was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Pulwama district. Three other Jaish militants were also killed in the incident. Ten days later, an improvised explosive device ripped through an army vehicle belonging to the 44 Rashtriya Rifles and travelling on the Arihal-Lassipora road, killing two jawans. The incident seems to have drawn interest to the village of about 5,000 people. As August 5 drew near, the interest seemed have deepened.

Source: https://scroll.in/article/935245/raids-at-night-handbills-by-day-army-siege-in-south-kashmir-escalates-after-special-status-revoked