Indian Army accused of assaulting eight-year-old with a brick in Kashmir’s Bandipora

23 September 2019
Khadija Bano, a resident of Malapora village, holds a photograph of her 22-year-old son, Ishfaq Ahmad. He was among seven people detained from Malapora during a midnight raid, on 18 August, by the Indian Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police, according to residents.
Masrat Zahra
Khadija Bano, a resident of Malapora village, holds a photograph of her 22-year-old son, Ishfaq Ahmad. He was among seven people detained from Malapora during a midnight raid, on 18 August, by the Indian Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police, according to residents.
Masrat Zahra

Around midnight on 18 August, the Indian Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police detained seven people during a joint raid in Saderkoot Bala Malapora, a village in Bandipora district, according to residents. Among the seven were Mohammad Ramzan Ganei, a 40-year-old man and his 22-year-old son, Ishfaq Ahmad. The family said that the security forces in their house also assaulted Murtaza Bilal, an eight-year-old boy, who is Ganei’s grandson and Ahmed’s nephew. As one member of the forces lifted Bilal off the ground, a second member repeatedly hit him on his feet, while a third beat his head with a brick, the young boy recounted. “I had no idea why they were beating me,” Bilal said. Ganei was released ten days later, but Ishfaq still remains in custody.

Since 5 August, Kashmir has been in a state of lockdown after the Indian state read down Article 370 of the Constitution of India to abrogate Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, and downgraded it from a state to a union territory. Over seven million residents have been under a communications blackout and a military crackdown that has led to the arrests of at least four thousand people, according to news reports.

We visited Malapora on 14 September. Within minutes of asking a group of locals about the prevailing situation, we were surrounded by a crowd of men, women and children, each eager to talk about their experiences. It was evident that no journalist had visited the village since the Indian state’s clampdown began.

Quratulain Rehbar is a freelance journalist based in Srinagar. Her Twitter handle is @ainulrhbr.

Masrat Zahra is a photojournalist based in Kashmir.

Keywords: Kashmir Indian Army police excesses
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