[This is an AHRC Article.
Published in CounterCurrents.
Published in the Kashmir Times on 06-07-2017.]
Published in CounterCurrents.
Published in the Kashmir Times on 06-07-2017.]
‘Why do armed women cut off a particular organ of
Indian soldiers engaged in combating armed insurgencies across India, be it Punjab, Kashmir, Arunachal, Assam, Bengal or
Jharkhand?’ asked senior opposition leader Azam Khan. The insinuation was
unmistakable, and it had a basis: armed Maoists had indeed chopped off private parts of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel
slain in their latest big ambush in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, which
killed at least 25 soldiers. The gory act was attributed as revenge for the
alleged rapes committed by the CRPF personnel, many of them corroborated by the
state and national human rights commissions.
Azam Khan received a lot of flak, mostly from the unabashedly jingoist
media houses that treat any criticism of the Indian Army as an affront to the
‘nation’, and the critic as ‘anti-national’. Azam Khan’s long history of making
controversial statements added fuel to the fire, leaving many important nuances
lost in the ensuing cacophony.
The record of the Indian Army is interesting, with lots of glory, but
much gore as well. It has shown exemplary courage in both fighting at the
borders and saving citizens during calamities. At the same time, it has often
blemished its record by clear cut cases of committing serious human rights
violations, including extrajudicial killings and rapes.
The case of Thangjam Manorama comes readily to mind when thinking of Army brutality.
A resident of Manipur, Thangjam was picked up from her home by Assam Rifles
personnel in the dead of the night. Her brutally tormented body with dozens of
gunshots was found the next morning. A judicial commission
appointed by the government of Manipur later found that she was brutally tortured and
killed. The Commission also suspected that she was gangraped by the soldiers,
which could not be confirmed because she was shot in the vagina as well,
perhaps to destroy the evidence.
Sadly, her case is not an aberration committed by some
rogues in uniform. Dig just a little deeper, and it comes out as a pattern, a pattern
of rapes, and gangrapes, deployed as a regular weapon to fight insurgencies.
The pattern is so unambiguous that the Supreme Court asked the Indian Army if
it has “rapists in uniform”, while hearing a petition
filed by the Extra-Judicial
Execution Victims Families Association (EVAM) in Manipur.
Such rapes, committed by those constitutionally obligated to protect citizens,
are neither limited to Assam Rifles nor Manipur. Take, for example, the case of
Meena Khalkho, a 16-year-old tribal girl brutally raped and
killed by Chhattisgarh police personnel. This too is a finding of a judicial commission
established by the government of Chhattisgarh itself, which booked 25 cops
for her rape and murder. This too, sadly, is not an isolated incident of a
whole police station gone rogue.
In a later investigation in the same state, the National Human Rights
Commission of India (NHRC) admitted to have found prima facie evidence of security personnel having raped and sexually and physically assaulted at
least 16 women, mostly belonging to the tribal communities, and directed the
state government to pay compensation to them.
In Jammu and Kashmir as well, there are countless charges of rapes,
gang rapes and even mass rapes, against the security forces. It is therefore
clear that India’s security forces, including the Army, have a fairly blemished
record of sexual violence. Hiding such brutal crimes within the cloak of
nationalism will do nothing but help those bent to unravelling the nation,
citizen by citizen, state by state. Real nationalism would be to ensure that
all the constitutional guarantees are applied to every single citizen. The
right to life with dignity is a fundamental constitutional guarantee, and rape by
security forces is a clear violation of that constitutional promise.
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