New Delhi: A day after three civilians in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district were killed under as yet unexplained circumstances, the sarpanch of their village and the relatives of two of them have said they are among the villagers seen on video being brutally beaten and tortured by unidentified soldiers.
Family members and neighbours of Safeer Hussain (48), Mohammad Showkat (28) and Shabbir Ahmad (25) have told The Wire that videos in which the men are seen pleading with uniformed personnel and begging for their lives has traumatised them.
Though the army and J&K administration have not said who is responsible for the killing of the three which came in the wake of a fierce gun battle with militants in which five soldiers were killed, locals allege the men were killed in army custody. The Union territory’s administration – which comes under the overall supervision of the Union home ministry – has since announced “compensation for each of the deceased” and “compassionate appointments to next of kin” of those killed. On Sunday night, The Hindu reported that an FIR under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (murder) had been filed by the J&K police against unidentified persons.
Speaking to The Wire, Mehmood Ahmed, the village’s sarpanch identified Shabbir and Showkat from the viral video, in which soldiers can be seen brutally beating the captive men and throwing chilli powder on to the bare buttocks of some of them – a common method of torture by the police and security forces across India.
Mohammad Siddique, uncle of Mohammad Showkat, one of three civilians allegedly killed in Army custody, said that it was his nephew who was seen in the video, begging a lathi-wielding soldier with folded hands to let him go. “Showkat begged for mercy, he pleaded to them with our Prophet Mohammed’s name, but it didn’t melt them,” Siddique said.
He said that the lifeless person in black clothing, also seen in the now widely circulated video, was Safeer, whose brother is a head constable in the Border Security Force.
This story was originally published in thewire,in. Read the full story here .
