Articles on Shopian

Shopian: CBI On A Spree Of Manufacturing Lies
by Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

It didn’t take a single stroke for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to demolish the allegations of rape and murder in Shopian as a figment of imagination. It took several months to concoct a suitable story in pursuit of a conclusion that was already being gradually and selectively leaked out to the media in the last few months. The new addition is simply the ‘scientific’ presentation of the medical examination post exhumations, that trashes even the few fragments of evidence pointing to rape and murder in Shopian and jumping to the conclusion of ‘drowning’.

[read the rest here: http://www.countercurrents.org/jamwal161209.htm]

Shopian: Manufacturing A Suitable Story
Fact Finding Report By The Independent Women's Initiative for Justice

The Shopian rapes and murders epitomise the wrongs and injustices perpetrated on the people living in a militarised society. The incident not only manifests the extent of fear psychosis, denial of security and democratic rights to the people, it also demonstrates the abject refusal of those at the helm of affairs to bring the culprits of gross violation of human rights to book. Shopian is not a case in isolation. It is a leaf out of history of human rights abuse and absolute impunity that men in uniform enjoy. The latter have been accused in thousands of cases for torture, humiliation, encounters, disappearances, molestations, sexual assaults and other forms of harassment. Jammu and Kashmir has a long list of rape victims, none of whom has received justice, of missing men whose families wait for them year after year spending their lives in absolute penury and uncertainty, of killed men, orphaned children and widowed wives. Shopian rapes and murders fit into this ugly tapestry of brutalities and violations by men in uniform and a culture of impunity.

The last two decades in Kashmir and other militarised areas of J&K are marked by not just brutalities by security forces but also the unlimited protection these personnel get. Despite massive allegations, with serious evidence pointing out to the same in many of the cases against the security forces, very few cases were ever investigated. In a negligible number of cases, prosecution takes place. In none of them has justice been delivered.

[read the rest here: http://www.countercurrents.org/iwij111209.htm]

CBI’s Mission Kashmir: Manufacturing Consent On Shopian Rapes, Murders
By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

The CBI may have succeeded in its mission in Shopian, that of what Noam Chomsky refers to as manufacturing consent about non-existence of any violations in the twin rapes of Asiya Jan and her sister-in-law Neelofar Jan. But this is only as far as the opinion outside Jammu and Kashmir, formed by a consistent over-drive of narration of lies, is concerned.

Within Jammu and Kashmir, especially in Kashmir Valley, the exercise of manufacturing consent, however, has not only met with skepticism but also renewed bout of disappointment and erosion of already fragile confidence of the people in institutions of the State. As Majlis-e-Mushawarat Shopian, spearheading the agitation for justice in the Shopian rapes and murders case for the last nearly five months, has pointed out: “The CBI appears to be completing the unfinished business of agencies previously investigating the crime.”

[read the rest here: http://www.countercurrents.org/jamwal261009.htm]