Kashmir: Four sentenced to death in Indian-held Kashmir

24 April 2015 22:34 (Last updated 24 April 2015 22:36)

Four men were convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl in the northern Kupwara district in 2007.

By Shazia Yousuf

SRINAGAR, INDIAN HELD KASHMIR 

A court in Indian-held Kashmir on Friday sentenced four men to death after they were convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl in the northern Kupwara district in 2007. The District and Sessions court called it a “rarest of rare cases” to justify resorting to capital punishment. Tabinda Gani, an 8th grade student from the Langate area in northern Indian-held Kashmir, or IHK, was abducted, raped and murdered by the four convicts while she was on her way home from the school on July 7, 2007.

“It was a Friday and the schools closed early at noon for the Friday prayers. And Tabinda was passing through a less frequented stretch of road when these four people abducted her,” Ghulam Mohammad Shah, the public prosecutor told The Anadolu Agency. “When she failed to return home for a couple of hours, her family started looking for her and what they found was heartrending.”

Tabinda’s family and villagers, Shah said, found in an orchard bottles of alcohol and soft drinks and nearby a shoe belonging to Gani and then a piece of her dress.

“Then they found her naked body half buried under a small mound of earth and covered by hay. Her throat had been slit and she had been raped and brutalized,” Shah said. The police in the IHK arrested the four people sentenced Friday in August 2007. After a trial of eight years in which the statements of more than 80 witnesses were recorded, the court gave them the death penalty. While two of the convicted were locals from the same district, the other two were from India.

The courtroom, which was jam-packed with hundreds of people, saw numerous emotional outbursts when the verdict was delivered. Gani’s family broke down and hugged each other. They said that they hoped the verdict would bring closure to a painful journey and the unspeakable loss. “For the last eight years, we have waited to hear these words. But we continue to wait for the day when they will all be hanged,” Mohammad Iqbal, Gani’s brother said. 

The death sentence was a first for the District and Sessions judge, Mohammad Ibrahim Wani, who told The Anadolu Agency that he hoped that it would also be his last. “It is extremely difficult to sentence someone to death. Life and death are in God’s hands alone, but I followed the law. It was the rarest of rare cases and that is why I gave them capital punishment,” Wani said. Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.

Source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/499244--four-sentenced-to-death-in-indian-held-kashmir [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Four get death penalty for Kashmir gangrape, murder

April 24,2015, 05.02 PM IST | | IANS

Srinagar: A trial court in the Kupwara border district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday sentenced four people to death in a 2007 gang rape and murder of a 13 year-old girl. Principal District and Sessions Judge Kupwara, Muhammad Ibrahim Wani, announced the sentence on Friday. He pronounced all the four accused as guilty, awarding them death penalty.

On July 20, 2007, Tabinda Gani, of Batpora Langate, was found dead in an orchard in Kupwara. The body of Tabinda, a class eight student, was found with her throat slit. Medical reports confirmed that the girl had been raped before being murdered. The four convicts are Sadiq Mir and Azhar Mir of Langate Kupwara and two non-locals, Jehangir Ansari of West Bengal and Suresh Kumar of Rajasthan.

The family of the victim and the civil society hailed the court verdict. The incident had rocked Kashmir with large scale protests demanding severe punishment for the culprits.

Source: http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-04-24/Four-get-death-penalty-for-Kashmir-gangrape-murder-146659 [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Rajiv’s Killers Versus Afzal Guru

SRINAGAR, WEDNESDAY, 25 RABI-AL-THANI 1435 ; 26 FEBRUARY 2014 CE 

- RIYAZ AHMAD

The contrast also compares the two democracies, Tamil Nadu, J&K.

There were two developments that riveted our attention last week. And the mayhem in the state Assembly was not one of them despite the injury to a PDP legislator or the slapping of a marshal by one of the party’s legislators. One, was the commutation of the death sentence of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s killers to the life imprisonment by the Apex Court. And second the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s decision to release all the seven of them and the ensuing confrontation with centre. The clash made for a gripping political drama and heady television. But Kashmir was hooked for a different reason. 

One, that the killers of a former prime minister of India and a member of the ruling dynasty who were on death row for the past eleven years were granted a due recourse to law and their plea accepted by the court. Second, Tamil Nadu CM dramatically deciding to set them free and setting a three day deadline for the centre to respond. 

New Delhi went into a tizzy, objecting to the release. Supreme Court stayed the move but that was not what was important. The important thing was that even the killers of a prime minister of India, if they are not from Kashmir, can expect not only a fairer process of justice but even clemency with a Chief Minister’s support to boot. Contrast this with what happened to Muhammad Afzal Guru who, by Apex Court’s own order had a circumstantial link to the parliament attack. So he had to die to “satisfy the collective consciousness” of India. He was pulled out of the death row queue where he was at around number 30 and sent to gallows without his family getting a wind of it. He was told about the rejection of his mercy petition by the president only an hour before his death. And his mortal remains continue to be withheld from his family. 

And all the political class in the state has behaved as if they could do little about it. More so, the Chief Minister whose response has veered from publicly complaining about his advise against hanging being ignored by the centre to being kept in dark about the hanging itself. And ever since CM may have issued statements against the hanging, warned of a fallout in Kashmir and Afzal’s long term iconization for the new generation of Kashmiri youth, even seeking his mortal remains but there has never been an occasion when he has made us confident of his will or ability to do something about it. 

Unlike Tamil Nadu government, his government couldn’t get up the courage to pass the resolution on Afzal and nor does his government build a pressure or even make a case for the return of Afzal’s mortal remains. The truth is that behind the CM’s Afzal outrage – honestly felt or politically dictated – there has been a little veiled squeamishness about being too strongly identified with him. But no such defensiveness for Jayalalitha. Not also for Badal, who has BJP as an ally. Rajiv’s and Beant Singh’s killers respectively are not only an opportunity for political posturing and playing to their constituencies but also for some credible action which forces centre to rethink and revise its decision. 

The point here is not to fan an already deep sense of victimhood in Kashmir but to highlight a persisting democratic paradox in the state: the inability of the so called democratic representatives to adequately represent, respond or even play to the legitimate grievances and sentiments of their people. True, mainstream politics in the state cannot project the sentiment of Azadi but this was also never expected of them. Majority of the people who vote for them are conscious of this fact. But what they want from them is not only to deliver the good governance but also fight for their interests and rights and take an unambiguous stand when New Delhi seems to have discriminated against the state. 

And not only talk about it in no uncertain terms but be seen to act to undo it. But what we get is either apathy, a cryptic silence, may be sometimes a statement or two expressing an opinion or simply a show of silence. If anything, the case of Rajiv’s killers exposes the democracy in the state for what it is always suspected to be – a government by the people but obliged to if not representative of New Delhi. 

Source: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Feb/26/rajiv-s-killers-versus-afzal-guru-8.asp [accessed 24 April 2014]

Death anniversary: Kashmiri freedom fighter remembered

MIRPUR: The 28th death anniversary of Muhammad Maqbool Butt, a leader of the Kashmir Freedom Movement, was observed on Saturday on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) with a renewed pledge to continue his mission till the achievement of the right of self-determination.

Processions were taken out to pay tribute to Butt who was awarded the death sentence by India. He was hanged on February 11, 1984, in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail for demanding the birthright of self determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir state under the UN resolutions and the liberation of Kashmir from Indian subjugation.

Speakers called upon the international community to exert pressure on India to immediately hand over Butt’s dead body to his family members. Speakers said that Butt’s sacrifice infused a new spirit among Kashmiris to accelerate their struggle for the achievement of their fundamental right of self-determination denied by India for the past 63 years.

Speakers also demanded the immediate demilitarisation of Indian-held Kashmir, unconditional release of all political detainees and repeal of black laws. Speakers appreciated the opening of routes across the LoC by India and Pakistan and demanded the revival of all other natural routes to enable the free movement of Kashmiris from either side without any discrimination.

Earlier, hundreds of activists of JKNLF, JKLF, Plebiscite Front, NSF and other social and political organisations took out a torch-bearing procession from Shaheed Chowk on Friday night, to highlight the contribution of the martyred Kashmiri leader to the freedom struggle.

The participants of the rally lit candles in memory of Kashmiri martyrs. Speakers urged the world community to help stop massive human rights abuses in Indian-held Kashmir. Across the LoC, Butt’s death was marked with a complete strike across the held valley.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2012.
Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/335155/death-anniversary-kashmiri-freedom-fighter-remembered/ accessed on 13th February 2012