In a disturbing revelation, Indian government has admitted the disappearance of around 10,000 innocent women in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The Srinagar-based Association of Parents of Dis-appeared Persons has documented custodial disappearance of over 8,000 innocent Kashmiris after they were picked up by Indian Army, paramilitary and police personnel since January 1989. Many of those are believed to be killed in fake encounters by Indian troops in different areas of IIOJK.
Human rights defenders and organizations are of the opinion that the unnamed mass graves scattered across the occupied territory contain the bodies of the victims of these fake encounters.
Now the Indian Minister of State for Home, Ajay Mishra, told Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament, the other day that 9,765 women in the categories above and below 18 have gone missing in occupied Kashmir since 2019. He informed that in these three years, there were 1148 cases of missing girls below the age of 18 and 8,617 women aged above 18. Political experts say that mental torture, arrests, interrogation, questioning and harassment during crackdown operations and house raids by the Indian forces’ personnel and sleuths of dreaded agencies like National Investigation Agency and State Investigation Agency in Kashmir Valley and Muslim areas of the Jammu region are the main reasons behind the disturbing phenomenon.
Meanwhile, the Vice Chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Ghulam Ahmed Gulzar, in a statement issued in Srinagar said the 5th August is one of the most tragic, painful and catastrophic days in the modern history of occupied Kashmir. He said that on the 5th August in 2019 Hindutva forces in India in flagrant violation of the international law and UN resolutions scrapped special status of IIOJK and deprived its people of all basic rights. He appealed to the Kashmiri people to observe strike on the August 05, the Youm-e-Istehsal-e-Kashmir, as a Black Day. Posters appearing in the Kashmir Valley also asked the people of the occupied territory to observe August 5, Youm-e-Istehsal-e-Kashmir, as Black Day.
The APHC leader, Masroor Abbas Ansari, talking to media men in Srinagar urged the Indian government to release all illegally detained Kashmiri religious leaders languishing in different jails of IIOJK and India.
Tehreek-e-Wahdat-e-Islami, a constituent of APHC, in a statement issued in Srinagar termed the Indian authorities’ decision to end the ban on the main processions of Muharram as a mere facade.
It said the Modi regime gave a conditional permission to take out the 8th Muharram procession in Srinagar to hoodwink the world into believing that everything is normal in the territory but the fact of the matter is that it has snatched away all political, social, economic and religious rights of the people of the occupied territory.—KMS
