Residents of a dozen villages in disputed Kashmir accuse Indian troops of raiding their homes in an apparent campaign of intimidation, inflicting beatings, electric shocks and poisoning food supplies. India says the allegations are false.
In this Monday, Aug. 26, 2019, photo, a Kashmiri baker Sonaullah Sofi lifts the shirt from his son's back to show torture marks allegedly caused by Indian army soldiers at their bakery in southern village of Parigam, Indian controlled Kashmir. The main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir presents a mostly deserted and subdued look, woven in a maze of razor wire.
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. 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.
In the village of Parigam, the family of baker Sonaullah Sofi was asleep when army troops raided his home. The soldiers took his two sons into a street, hitting them with gun butts, iron chains and sticks, Sofi said. Since the crackdown began, at least 3,000 people, mostly young men, have been arrested, according to police officials and records reviewed by the AP. About 120 of those have been slapped with the Public Safety Act, a law that permits holding people for up to two years without trial, the records showed.
New Delhi initially grappled with largely peaceful anti-India movements in its portion of Kashmir. However, a series of political blunders, broken promises and a crackdown on dissent escalated the conflict into a full-blown armed rebellion against Indian control in 1989 for a united Kashmir, either under Pakistan rule or independent of both. Since then, about 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which India sees as a proxy war by Pakistan.
Abuses alleged by rights groups since 1989 have included rape, sodomy, waterboarding, electric shocks to the genitals, burns and sleep deprivation.
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