Kashmiris allege beatings, abuse in raids by soldiers, Army refutes charge

The soldiers descended on Bashir Ahmed Dar's house in southern Kashmir on August 10, a few days after the government in New Delhi stripped the state of its statehood and launched a crackdown. Over the next 48 hours, the 50-year-old plumber said he was subjected to two separate rounds of beatings by soldiers.
They demanded that he find his younger brother, who had joined rebels opposing scrapping of Article 370 and persuade him to surrender or else "face the music."
In the second beating, at a military camp, Dar said he was struck with sticks by three soldiers until he was unconscious. He woke up at home, "unable to sit on my bruised and bloodied buttocks and aching back," he added.

But it wasn't over. On Aug. 14, soldiers returned to his house in the village of Heff Shirmal and destroyed his family's supply of rice and other foodstuffs by mixing it with fertilizer and kerosene.

Dar's account of violence and intimidation by soldiers was not unusual. In more than 50 interviews, residents in a dozen villages in Kashmir told The Associated Press that the military had raided their homes since India's government imposed a security crackdown in the region Aug. 5. They said the soldiers inflicted



beatings and electric shocks, forced them to eat dirt or drink filthy water, poisoned their food supplies or killed livestock, and threatened to take away and marry their female relatives.
Thousands of young men have been arrested.
Asked by AP to respond to the recent allegations of abuse from the Northern Command, the Army's headquarters in Jammu and Kashmir. Its spokesman based in the main city of Srinagar, Col. Rajesh Kalia, dismissed the villagers' accounts as "completely baseless and false," and asserted the Indian army values human rights.
"There have been reports of movement of terrorists" in the areas AP visited, Kalia said. "Some youth were suspected to be involved in anti-national and disruptive activities and were handed over to police as per law of the land."
India's top security official, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, said the army has not been involved in the operation in Kashmir. "There have been no atrocities," he said.
For years, there have been accusations from Kashmir residents and international human rights groups that troops have carried out systematic abuse and unjustified arrests of those who oppose rule from New Delhi in the divided region that is claimed by both India and Pakistan.