Both regular, uniformed Indian army and federal security forces and state-sponsored paramilitary groups have committed serious and widespread human rights violations in Kashmir. These violations have characterized the behavior of regular troops since the conflict began in 1990. While reports of some kinds of abuse have decreased since 1994, such as the indiscriminate use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators, other abuses, notably summary executions and torture, show no sign of abatement, due in part to the activities of the state-sponsored militias. As noted above, these groups operate without any accountability. Wearing no uniforms, their members cannot be easily identified. There is no one to whom civilians may register complaints about the group's behavior. As one Kashmiri doctor told Human Rights Watch/Asia, "When someone misbehaved, he was wearing a uniform, so he was accountable. We could call his commander. Now, when these renegades misbehave, there is no one to call. No one accepts responsibility for them, though we know the government is sponsoring them.
Human Rights Watch/Asia obtained overwhelming evidence of the fact that these groups are organized, armed and protected by the Indian army and other security forces and operate under their command and protection, despite the Indian government's claims to the contrary. The government uses the groups in a number of ways: as informers who watch and report on the activities of the militants; as spies to infiltrate existing militant organizations; or as members of paramilitary "renegade" organizations to attack members of Jamaat-e Islami and Hezb-ul Mujahidin and other militant groups. Members of these militias are also used to support Indian government policies. In public statements, Koko Parray has indicated his group's support for the elections and intention to field candidates and ensure that people in areas under its control vote despite the militants' boycott.
Government officials have described the recruitment of former militants as a rehabilitation program. While that might be the stated goal of the government's efforts, as of April 1996, no rehabilitation programs were functioning. In an interview with Human Rights Watch/Asia, Gopal Sharma, Inspector General (IG) of Police, acknowledged that since August 15, 1995, the government had agreed to pay Rs. 5,000 [$143) to any militant who surrendered AK-series assault rifles and varying amounts for other small arms. Sharma also stated that upon surrendering their weapons, the militants were supposed to be sent to designated rehabilitation centers where they would be paid Rs. 2000 [$57] a month for six months. At the time that Human Rights Watch/Asia met with IG Sharma, he claimed that one such center had been established in Jammu and another was to be created in Srinagar. However, a report by India Today published in March 1996 noted that no one was lodged at the Jammu center. " Sharma admitted:
Government officials routinely deny that these groups do anything more than act as informants for the security forces. In a March 1996 report in the national daily Hindu, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Ashok Kumar denied allegations that the government was providing arms to surrendered militants, stating that "[t]he government will not be party to such a racket. We are not giving arms to the illegal persons. " That statement was contradicted by Lt. Gen. (Retd. ) D. D. Saklani, adviser to the state governor, who told reporters that the government was going to provide the surrendered militants with licenses for 12-bore guns [shotguns]. " In a report published in the Times of India on March 9, 1996, Colonel K. P. Ramesh of the Rashtriya Rifles stated that surrendered militants were provided arms for their protection and given reward money for providing information. "
During the Human Rights Watch/Asia visit to Kashmir in January 1996, we were informed that these groups have been armed by the government. On several occasions, Human Rights Watch/Asia observed members of these groups moving about openly carrying automatic weapons, in full view of security personnel, even though under the government's rehabilitation program, all surrendered militants are required to hand over their weapons. In one case investigated by Human Rights Watch/Asia, members of Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, who had detained a hospital worker they suspected of militant sympathies, ordered his colleagues to buy him a pistol so that they could confiscate it and 40 pretend to the security forces that they had succeeded in getting a militant to surrender.
On several occasions in January 1996, Human Rights Watch/Asia also observed Indian army forces carrying out patrols and other operations accompanied by members of such groups. In one incident, for about three hours on the morning of January 21 in Naseem Bagh, seven kilometers southwest of Srinagar, four men armed with AK-47s blocked the road and stopped every passing vehicle. Accompanying them were six army soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles unit. A witness told Human Rights Watch/Asia about another incident that occurred at 9:30 AM on January 23, 1996. The witness had observed a white car on the main road in Wanbal - Nawgam, six kilometers southwest of Srinagar. In it were six people, all of whom were wearing civilian clothes, including-one known to the witness as a surrendered militant. About thirty feet behind the car were seven army trucks and an eighth army vehicle bearing a red cross. All of the vehicles, led by the white car, were proceeding very slowly in a line toward Srinagar.
In January 1996, a taxi driver in Srinagar told Human Rights Watch/Asia that several days earlier he had been approached by two members of a paramilitary group who demanded the use of his taxi. The driver stated that the men told him they wanted to go to a village ten kilometers outside Srinagar. The driver took them, but when they got there, one of the men pulled out a grenade, the other a pistol. One of the men showed a card, which the driver could not see, and said they were "Task Force" and that they needed the car, but they would return it by 3:00 PM that afternoon. Then the men said that they would drop the driver off at a bus stop so he could get back to Srinagar. One of the two men drove. As he drove, they passed by an army camp. The soldiers waved the car by without stopping it. The men dropped the driver off. The driver returned to Srinagar and waited at the taxi stand that afternoon, but the taxi was not returned to him until two days later.
The state-sponsored groups operate with impunity. In an interview with Human Rights Watch/Asia, Police Inspector General Gopal Sharma claimed that "surrendering [did] not relieve [former militants] of legal responsibility for their crimes," and that some had been prosecuted, "but convictions [were) hard to come by. " However, another police officer responsible for investigating the activities of these groups contradicted Sharma's assertion, complaining that Army and BSF officers had also secured the release of paramilitary force members when they had been arrested by local police. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
According to a report in India Today, the government's policy of using surrendered militants for counterinsurgency efforts "has heightened the enmity between the various security agencies operating in Kashmir -mainly the Border Security Force (BSF) and the army-with each trying to score a point by notching up a higher tally of surrendered militants. "" Militants who have surrendered to the army have been beaten by BSF forces for not surrendering to them. The BSF reportedly told some of them to obtain new weapons so that they could surrender again, and the BSF could get the credit. "
Victims of abuse by these groups have testified that the government has deliberately avoided arresting members of these groups even when there was clear evidence of their committing crimes. Residents angry at extortion by the groups have demanded that the administration either disarm the groups or give them uniforms. After four journalists were abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces in July 1995, the security forces made no effort to apprehend leaders of the group, even after Koko Parray acknowledged publicly that he had ordered the kidnaping. Parray was even permitted to hold a press conference on the incident.
The security forces have also been complicit in these crimes. During the joumalists' kidnaping, Ikhwan forces were waved through security checkpoints after they had given a prearranged password. The paramilitaries operate close proximity to army and BSF camps. Some members of these groups have been housed in the camps.
A witness who was abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces told Human Rights Watch that he was detained at a house adjacent to an army Rashtriya Rifles camp at Umarheer, Ahmed Nagar, Baspara, three kilometers from Soura hospital. A Rashtriya Rifles bunker stands at the entrance to the house. The local Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon commander, Mohammad Ramzan, who had interrogated the witness, apparently lived in the house. Ikhwan-ulMuslimoon forces identified two women who were cooking in the house as Ramzan's wife and sister-in-law.
The paramilitary militias have principally targeted Hezb-ul Mujahedin militants and members of the banned pro-Pakistan political party, Jamaat-e Islami. Like their counterparts in the regular security forces, they have also killed civilians in reprisal for militant attacks on their forces. According to a press report, in early February, 1996, Hizbul Mujahedin forces abducted twelve members of a state-sponsored paramilitary group from a house in Bagh-e-Mehtab located near an army camp. The heads of three of the men taken were found later; the fate of the remaining nine is not known. Other members of the state-sponsored group retaliated by dragging an elderly man off a bus and lynching him and burning down eleven houses and seven shops. "
Human rights activists have increasingly come under attack in Kashmir. Between April 1995 and April 1996, two human rights monitors were killed and one critically injured. " The impact on Kashmir's human rights community has been devastating. Lawyers who had formerly taken up petitions on behalf of victims of abuses no longer do so out of fear of reprisals, particularly from the mercenary groups. Many have left Kashmir. The few human rights activists who have continued to document abuses in Kashmir do so at considerable risk to themselves.
The body of Jalil Andrabi, a prominent human rights lawyer and pro-independence political activist associated with the JKLF, was found in the Kursuraj Bagh area of Srinagar on the banks of the Jhelum river on the morning of March 27, 1996. According to press reports, the body was in a burlap bag. Andrabi, who was forty-two, had been shot in the head and his eyes had been gouged out. He had apparently been dead for at least one week. According to eye-witnesses, Andrabi was detained at about 6:00 Pm on March 8 by a Rashtriya Rifles unit of the army which intercepted his car a few hundred yards from his home in Srinagar. On March 9, the Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association filed a habeas corpus petition in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, and the court ordered the army to produce Andrabi. However, the army denied that Andrabi was in custody. Over the next two weeks, the court continued to grant the government extensions for replying to the petition.
The murder sparked widespread protests in Kashmir and condemnation from civil liberties groups in India and abroad. In Srinagar, a protest march led by JKLF leader Yasin Malik was broken up by police who beat up members of the crowd, smashed a number of reporters' cameras and seized the body. " The police also fired shots in tile air to disperse the crowd. In a statement released on March 29, the United States condemned the murder and called for a "full and transparent investigation. " On April 2, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso called on the government of India to "undertake a thorough investigation . . . with a view to establishing the facts and imposing sanctions on those found guilty of the crime. " On April 3, India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) announced. that it would send a team to Kashmir to investigate the killing.
Andrabi had previously received death threats from government-sponsored so-called "renegade" forces. At about 9:30AM on January 29, 1996, two men arrived at Andrabi's house in Srinagar, claiming that they wished to discuss a human rights case with him. After confirming that Andrabi was at home, one of the men left, saying that he was going to bring his mother and sister who were waiting outside in a taxi. " He returned instead with a third man. At that moment, a number of other persons gathered at the house, including Andrabi's brother, who began questioning the men. The three men abruptly left, stating that they would see Andrabi at his office. After they left, witnesses in the vicinity of the outside gate of the neighborhood reported that the three men had returned to two waiting taxis in which eight more men were sitting, some openly carrying weapons.
The next day, at 9:20AM, the first two men returned to Andrabi's house. After confirming that Andrabi was at home, they left and returned along with at least two other men in a taxi with license number Reg. JKT-1988. Andrabi told Human Rights Watch/Asia that one of the other men appeared to be wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon under his pheran (a long woolen cape). From an upstairs window, Andrabi took photographs of the men and the taxi. When the men saw him, they abruptly returned to the taxi and left. Local residents reported that on the way to Andrabi's house, the taxi had been escorted by a Border Security Force vehicle until it was within one hundred yards of the outside gate of the neighborhood.
The incident followed several other attacks on human rights activists in Kashmir, and about a week before the incident, Andrabi had told Human Rights Watch/Asia that he had received warnings that he "would be next. " Since 1984, Andrabi had filed petitions in the High Court on behalf of detainees and had publicized the fact that the security forces routinely ignored High Court orders to produce detainees in court. At the time he was abducted, he was preparing for a trip to Geneva to attend the meeting of the U. N. Human Rights Commission where he hoped to raise concern about the human rights situation in Kashmir.
Mian Abdul Qayoom, forty-six, was until April 1995 the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association and one of Kashmir's most prominent human rights monitors. Under his direction, the bar association produced voluminous records of human rights violations by Indian security forces in Kashmir. On April 22, 1995, he was shot by two unidentified gunmen. The incident left Qayoom permanently disabled.
At 9:OOAM on April 22,1995, Qayoom observed two young men outside his house. They asked him if he was Mian Qayoom and when he replied that he was, they told him that their "boy" Jahangir, was in jail in Jammu and that his case was to be heard before a TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act] court" in Jammu. They asked Qayoom if he would appear on his behalf. Qayoom asked them if they had any papers on the case, and they told him that their father was outside in the car, and that they would obtain the papers from him. Qayoom told them to meet him at his office, a building adjacent to the house.
As Qayoom went out the side door of the house toward his office, he saw one of the men walking down the front yard toward the driveway, while the other man stayed near the door to the office. Qayoom unlocked the office door, and he and the second man entered the office together. As Qayoom turned to sit down, he saw that the man had a Pistol in his hand. The man fired one bullet into the left side of Qayoom's stomach As Qayoom fell to the floor, the man fired another shot, which missed. Family members rushed to the office, and the man put the pistol into the side of his pants and ran away. The family ran after him and saw him get into a white Maruti car. The family put Qayoom in a car and took him to the SMHS hospital. He was there for ten days, and then transferred to the Batra Hospital in Delhi where he remained for ten weeks. His left kidney was removed, and he underwent two additional operations to remove the bullet and repair nerve damage. Despite the operations, Qayoom was left permanently disabled and is no longer able to stand or walk. Jammu and Kashmir police collected the second bullet from the site and an FIR" [First Information Report] was registered. No one has been charged in the case.
Qayoom had received a warning that he would be killed. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia that on June 30, 1994, while he was in court in Srinagar, a Jammu and Kashmir policeman handed Qayoom a paper marked "secret" in which unnamed sources claimed that Hezb-ul Mujahidin planned to kill Qayoom because of his alleged association with the JKLF. However, Qayoom was not associated with the JKLF but with the Jamaat-e-Islami, a banned political party which is pro-Pakistan; the militant organization Hezb-ul-Mujahedin is aligned with the Jamaat. After seeing this paper, Qayoom filed a FIR charging that government forces ?ere conspiring to kill him. He also informed the NHRC and Delhi-based human rights activists of the incident.
Qayoom had been arrested on several occasions because of his human rights work and his public statements supporting self-determination in Kashmir. On July 29, 1990, while he was still president of the bar association and president of a political grouping of eleven parties supporting independence, he was arrested by the BSF in Pulwama and charged under the Public Safety Act" with making a statement calling for self-determination for Jammu and Kashmir.
He was detained for nearly two years. His detention was challenged by the Bar Association in the High Court, and on February 14, 199 1, the court declared the detention unconstitutional and directed the superintendent of district jails in Jammu to release him. Qayoom was released but before he could leave the jail he was re-arrested and taken to the Joint Interrogation Center (JIC)" in Jammu. On March 1, the court approved an application for bail, but again, before he could be released, he was ordered detained under the PSA for another year. On February 15, 1992, fifteen days before the detention order was to expire, Qayoom was again re-arrested on the same grounds for which he had obtained bail in 1991. He was finally released on February 23, 1992, when the Supreme Court of India rejected the government's appeal of the bail order.
Upon release in March 1992, Qayoom was re-elected president of the bar association. He continued to focus on human rights cases, visiting jails, filing petitions on behalf of detainees, and meeting with international visitors and monitors. In April 1993, when he tried to go on the haj (Muslim pilgrimage) in Saudi Arabia, he and his wife were stopped at the New Delhi airport. In 1994, he was granted permission to go on the haj, but when he returned, he was detained for three hours and his passport was impounded.
He stated that his house had been raided some twenty times since 1990; the most recent was In June 29, 1994, when BSF soldiers searched it in the middle of the night. According to advocates in Srinagar, the bar association virtually ceased functioning after Qayoom's shooting.
Human Rights Watch/Asia requested information from the government of India about the incident. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) stated that the attack on Qayoom "was a sequel to intergang rivalry. " The NHRC provided no other information or evidence to clarify this statement, except to say that a police investigation in still underway. "Intergang rivalry" is the standard phrase used by the government to downplay abuses by state-sponsored militias. The Home Ministry confirmed that a police investigation was continuing. As of May, 1996, no one had been charged in the shooting of Mian Abdul Qayoom.
These attacks on Andrabi and Qayoom were the latest in a pattern of attacks on human rights monitors. In 1992-1993, three leading human rights activists were killed in Srinagar. On December 5, 1992, H. N. Wanchoo, a retired civil servant and trade unionist who had documented hundreds of cases of extrajudicial executions, disappearances and torture by the security forces, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen. On February 18, 1993, Dr. Farooq Ahmed Ashai, an orthopedic surgeon who documented cases of torture and indiscriminate assaults on civilians, was shot by Central Reserve Police Force troops, who fired at his car, which was marked with a red cross, apparently in retaliation for an earlier militant attack. The troops then reportedly delayed his being taken promptly to a hospital for emergency care. He died shortly after finally reaching the hospital. On March 3, Dr. Abdul Ahad Guru, a leading member of the militant Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) who had documented abuses by Indian security forces, was abducted by unidentified gunmen and shot dead. The government of India has never made public any action it has taken to investigate these killings and prosecute those responsible. "
Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon and other state-sponsored armed groups in Kashmir have demonstrated a particular antipathy toward the press. In July 1995, four journalists with the dailies Greater Kashmir and Naida-IMushraq were abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces and held for four days. After ordering several newspapers to temporarily cease publication in November 1995, Koko Parray accused all of the Kashmir journalists of being militants: "There is little difference between the editors and the Hizbul Mujahidin. Journalists are writing posters and pamphlets for them. "" After several days, the papers were permitted to resume publication.
On December 8, 1995, Zafar Mehraj, a veteran Kashmiri journalist, was shot and critically injured as he returned from an interview with Koko Parray, the head of the state-sponsored paramilitary group Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, at Parray's headquarters in Hajan, a small town fifty kilometers from Srinagar. Mehraj, forty-three, was working for Zee television, an independent television corporation. He had previously been threatened by both the security forces, who suspected him because of his ties to militant group and his travel in Pakistan, and some militant groups who resented his contacts with Indian officials. Although the identity of the gunmen who shot him may never be known, the evidence strongly suggests the involvement of state-sponsored militia forces.
The interview with Koko Parray had originally been scheduled for November 26, but Parray would not meet with them then and told them to return on December 8. That day the Huriyat had called a general strike, but the press was free to travel. During the interview Parray met with one of his men for fifteen minutes. After the interview, the journalists declined lunch and left at 12:45 PM When they reached the village of Shaltang, nine kilometers north of Srinagar, they saw a cream colored Ambassador car with its hood up and a man looking inside. As they drove by, the man held up an AK-47 rifle and ordered the journalists to stop. With the man were two other men, all wearing scarves covering their faces and carrying AK-47s. One of them approached the front seat and asked, "What are you doing?" When told that they were journalists, he said, "You were meeting with that bastard, Koko Parray, bloody informer. We are from Hezb-ul-Mujahidin. " Then the two men went to the back seat window and asked, "You are Zafar Mehraj?" After Mehraj had identified himself, they asked him who he had been to sec. When he said he had interviewed Koko Parray, the men ordered him to come with him. Mehraj did not move, so the man pulled him out forcibly.
When one of the other journalists tried to get out, and the same man pointed his AK-47 and said, "If you come out I'll shoot you. You can move from here after one hour. " He was speaking with an unusual accent; he was not from Srinagar. The men put Mehraj in the Ambassador car and drove away. Mehraj described what happened next:
Three bullets hit Mehraj. One caused a superficial wound; one entered his left upper back and exited the right upper back; one entered his left upper stomach and exited his right upper stomach. Two or three minutes after Mehraj had fallen to the ground, he heard the taxi and minibus leave together. He tried to wave down passing vehicles, but several passed him before a truck finally stopped. The driver told him that he could not risk his life by helping him, but if Mehraj could climb into the back of the truck by himself, the driver would take him to a place where he could get a lift to a hospital. Mehraj climbed into the truck, and the driver drove approximately ten kilometers to a small market town where Mehraj saw a police constable. Mehraj got out of the truck and told the constable that he had been shot. The constable told him to take a motorcycle taxi to the hospital.
Mehraj's transverse colon had been shattered, and he had suffered multiple small intestine injuries. He stayed at the SMHS hospital in Srinagar for five days and was then transferred to an army hospital for two days because the authorities told him that the militants were roaming around SHMS freely. In fact, at the time that Mehraj was being treated there, the SHMS hospital was being patrolled by Ikhwan forces. On December 15, he was transferred to the All-India Institute for Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
After Mehraj had been abducted, the journalists who were with him waited in the car for ten minutes. During that time, two boys came by on their way to a nearby mosque; they were about twelve and sixteen years old.
Shortly after that the journalists told the driver to go to Srinagar.
They had driven two kilometers from the spot where Mehraj was taken and arrived at the Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) crossings major industrial area. Seeing open shops, one of the journalists decided to stop and ask if any of the shop owners had seen the kidnapers car--a cream-colored Ambassador without license plates. One of shop owners said that ten minutes earlier he had seen a car matching the description headed toward Srinagar. As the journalist walked out of the shop, he saw the kidnapper's car and the kidnaper who had done the talking during the incident. He told the driver to follow the car, which was headed from Srinagar toward Baramulla.
The journalists followed the car for five or six kilometers, when the kidnapers car stopped. The journalists parked fifty meters behind them. The kidnaper came up to the car and said, "I told you to wait an hour. Why are you chasing us?"
When the driver asked, "What have we done?" the kidnapper struck him in the face. When one of the journalists got out of the car, the kidnapper said, "Look, bastard, the army is coming. Go away. "
At that moment, four army trucks filled with soldiers drove down the road-the national highway-from Baramulla toward Srinagar. The trucks passed right by them without stopping even though the kidnaper was standing in the middle of the road with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, and the two other kidnapers were standing near their car with AK-47s clearly visible in their hands.
At that point, the journalist got back in the car. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia, "I realized that they were renegades, so we drove away to Srinagar. "
Four or five days after the kidnaping, a correspondent for the Kashmir Times received a call from a man who identified himself as Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, and said that the correspondent must come to Sonwar, an Ikhwan camp two kilometers from Srinagar, and that if he did not, "We'll do the same thing to you that we did to Zafar Mehraj. " The correspondent did not go; he left Srinagar for Delhi.
On May 6, the Home Ministry informed Human Rights Watch/Asia that Mehraj had been returning from an interview with "the chief of a militant outfit," and that while the incident was still under police investigation, it was believed that [Mehraj] has been the victim of inter gang rivalry.
lkwan-ul Muslimoon forces have been patrolling the Soura Institute and the Bone and Joint Hospital since mid-1995. The local commander is Mohammad Ramzan, a former member of the JKLF who had been arrested by the Rashtriya Rifles in 1995. After that, Ramzan was seen at the hospital accompanied by other gunmen and by army soldiers wearing Rashtriya Rifles uniforms. Ramzan wore a bullet-proof jacket under his pheran [long cloak], as did some of others. He told hospital staff that he "wanted to bring discipline to the Institute.
Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon patrols are sometimes carried out jointly with other security forces. Their activities inside the hospitals, including assaults on staff and detentions of staff, patients and visitors, are carried out with the knowledge of BSF forces, who maintain bunkers at the entrances of the hospitals. A Jammu and Kashmir police station is also located at the entrance to the Soura institute. Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces enter the hospital on a regular basis and patrol in groups of twelve, armed with automatic weapons. They often carry walkie-talkies and speak into them in the course of their searches and patrols. They have threatened and harassed hospital staff and patients, looking for militants, and have taken suspects away to "camps. " One such camp is said to be located near the hospital, at an army base three kilometers away at Bachapora, Srinagar.
Before mid-1995, BSF forces themselves used to patrol the hospital, looking for militants. They would conduct search operations, known in Kashmir as "crackdowns," inside Soura, ordering all staff to line up and be searched. Any staff member or patient who is suspected of being involved with the militants is taken away; anyone who resists or objects is threatened or beaten. In November, Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces dragged a surgeon out of his office and kicked and punched him.
At 2:30pm on January 19, 1996, the day that Human Rights Watch/Asia visited the institute, Ikhwan forces were patrolling the main gate of Soura. Hospital employees stated that their presence was routine and that they usually stood only a few yards from the security bunker. Many hospital employees were unwilling to speak to Human Rights Watch/Asia out of fear. Doctors at the Bone and Joint Hospital complained that they were frequently searched by either armed paramilitary forces, while uniformed forces ringed the outside of the hospital, or by both paramilitary and uniformed Rashtriya Rifles forces.
Farooq Ahmed Sheikh, a thirty-one-year-old pharmacist at the Soura hospital, was shot dead by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces on December 2, 1995.
A week or so before the shooting, Ikhwan forces had accosted Farooq in the pharmacy department and forced him to accompany them to the dietetics section of the institute where they assaulted him. After several other pharmacy employees intervened, Farooq was released. After that incident Farooq told his colleagues at the hospital workers' association that a few days before the beating, he had been on duty at the hospital's emergency drug store.
Ramzan's men had come and asked for medicine, and Farooq had refused to give them any. The next day, Farooq had received a message at the pharmacy counter that he should come meet Ramzan, and he did not go. On the day of the beating, Ramzan and his men came to Sheik's department at about noon and took him first to the laundry office and then to the dietetics department, where they beat him. The men pinned his arms behind his back and beat him with gun butts all over his body. A hospital employee who was present told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
Several other employees were beaten by Ramzan and his men around this time. In one incident, Ramzan had four employees taken to a detention camp, but all were released the same day.
At 1:15PM on December 2, Farooq left the hospital's drug store with medicine to take to a patient. A hospital employee told Human Rights Watch/Asia that before Farooq was shot, Ramzan, accompanied by fifteen armed men, was standing in front of the inquiry office in the hospital.
Farooq had been waiting for the elevator when he was shot. He was shot once on the right side of the back of his head. He was operated on almost immediately, but went into a coma and died on December 9. Human Rights Watch/Asia inspected the site of the shooting. It was ten yards away from a window through which a BSF bunker at the hospital entrance is clearly visible, perhaps fifty yards from the hospital. There are also BSF bunkers at several places around the hospital. Given the security presence around the hospital, there is no way someone could fire a gun in the hospital without the security forces knowing.
Shortly after the shooting, Dr. Jalal arrived at the main entrance with his bodyguard, who was carrying a pistol. Ramzan's men accused the bodyguard, but when Dr. Jalal said the man had been with him and had nothing to do with the shooting, Ramzan let him go. The hospital employee continued:
After the shooting, Jammu and Kashmir police came to the hospital, but none of the hospital staff was willing to speak with them because Ramzan and his men patrolled the hospital until 7:00pm. The Home Ministry provided a brief report on the incident to Human Rights watch stating that "unknown militants fired upon Farooq Ahmad Sheikh" and that a case has been registered against the "militants".
"Ghulam" was a member of Soura Institute's employees' union. In November 1995, he was abducted from the hospital by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces and detained for at a camp near the hospital. While he was detained he was severely beaten. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia that ten to twelve men with automatic weapons forced him into a car outside the hospital entrance. Four other detainees were already in the car; they were all friends and relatives of patients in the hospital. Five or six gunmen, carrying automatic weapons, were standing outside the car talking into walkie-talkies. One of them entered the vehicle and demanded money from the detainees in the car and beat them with the butt of his gun until they handed it over. Fifteen minutes later, at about noon, Ramzan appeared and one of the gunmen asked "Ghulam" to come out of the car.
"Ghulam" was put in the car, and three of the others in the car were released. The car left the hospital, following a white Ambassador car carrying Ramzan and the others, and stopped at a joint Jammu and Kashmir police station and BSF camp located just outside the entrance to the hospital. After about tent or twelve minutes, Ramzan came out and got back into the Ambassador car, and both cars drove to Soura Chowk, where the fourth detainee was let go. Then both cars went to the Rashtriya Rifles camp at Umarheer, Ahmed Nagar, Baspara, three kilometers from Soura hospital. They pulled up to a house adjacent to Rashtriya Rifles camp, separated by a barbed wire fence. At the entrance to the house was a Rashtriya Rifles bunker. "Ghulam" was taken to a room inside the house, where Ramzan and about ten of his men were waiting. He was stripped and beaten with canes and guns, and again ordered to hand over a pistol. He was then locked in a basement until evening, when he was again beaten and then locked in another room for the night. In the morning, "Ghulam"'s brother came to the house, but Ramzan told him "Ghulam" could not be released until he produced a pistol. "Ghulam" continued to tell them that he did not have one. "Gulam" reported: