Kathua case: Anatomy of protests in support of the rape accused

The overt and covert backing received by the lawyers who agitated in support of the accused in the Kathua rape case, shows the deep Jammu-Kashmir regional divide that the nomadic tribes are caught in

Ashutosh Sharma

Published: 22 Apr 2018, 8:51 AM

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has two High Court wings—one each in Jammu, the winter capital, and Srinagar, the summer capital. But the biological father of the Kathua rape and murder victim, a nomadic Muslim girl who was two months short of eight years, has requested the Supreme Court to transfer the case to Chandigarh. His contention is that following the lawyers-led protests in favour of the arrested accused persons, the atmosphere in Jammu is not conducive for a fair trial.

If the case gets transferred to Srinagar, it will further communalise and politicise the issue in the state which is deeply divided on regional and religious lines, according to lawyers representing the case in the Supreme Court.

Before the angry lawyers prevented the police from producing the chargesheet in the court at Kathua on April 9, Jammu Bar Association was already on strike since April 4. Though the Bar did not get support of several district bar associations and majority of Muslim lawyers in the province, it had the overt and covert backing of several political organisations, civil society groups, trade bodies and the local media.

Besides the BJP and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP), the prominent organisations that supported the bandh included SOS International, an organisation fighting for the rights of PoK refugees, Panun Kashmir, an organisation of Kashmiri Pandit migrants, Dogra Front, Shiv Sena, Shiv Sena Bal Thackery and Ram Sena, among others. It also had representation of local Hindutva ideologues like Professor Hari Om

Political ambitions of some lawyers behind the protests

During the Jammu bandh rally on April 11, Bar president BS Slathia, referring to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, exhorted: “The Jammu youth today have Tricolour in their hands, don’t compel us…tomorrow they can pick up AK 47 and grenades.” A ‘journalist’ standing hand-in-hand with Slathia within no time interjected a slogan: “Slathia saab aage badho, hum tumhare saath hain (Slathia saab, you take the lead, we are with you).” The “young and dynamic face in media, Zorawar Singh Jamwal, has experience of about two decades in print journalism”, according to the website of Press Club of Jammu. Jamwal is secretary general of the club.

But two days later, under scathing criticism, Slathia again took out a rally in Jammu. This time he had a candle in his hand and demand for justice for the victim on his lips. Blaming the national media and Kashmir-based media of projecting the demands of the bar in a bad light, he said: “Transfer of case to CBI was never our primary demand. But now the chargesheet has been filed, it is for the court to decide the matter.”

Incidentally, the executive body of Jammu Bar Association has already completed its term and its elections are due. It’s current members obviously need political prominence to win the ensuing election.

The lawyers-led Jammu bandh was only a reflection of a larger political discourse in Jammu—that has been nurtured by the successive Central governments, to counter and neutralise Kashmir’s political narrative. The bandh was supported by all those groups which support revocation of constitutional provisions such as Article 370 and 35 A—which according to them are responsible for secessionism, separatism and terrorism in the state. They stand for complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India and separate statehood for Jammu, besides citizenship rights and financial compensation for Hindu-Sikh war refugees. The representatives of several civil society groups have repeatedly expressed their displeasure at the BJP, alleging that the party has betrayed the aspirations of Jammu region.

During the Jammu bandh rally on April 11, Bar president BS Slathia, referring to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, exhorted: “The Jammu youth today have Tricolour in their hands, don’t compel us…tomorrow they can pick up AK 47 and grenades.” A ‘journalist’ standing hand-in-hand with Slathia within no time interjected a slogan: “Slathia saab aage badho, hum tumhare saath hain (Slathia saab, you take the lead, we are with you)

The 2008 Amarnath land row agitation—that had the militancy-hit state divided along regional and religious lines for two months—was led by Sangharsh Samiti leaders including its chief Leela Karan Sharma who was then executive member of the Bar; and BS Slathia, who was the Bar president even then. Subsequently, Sharma unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket.

This time, the Bar has again hit the headlines in national and international media over three issues, according to its press statements in the run-up to the recent bandh. The issues included expulsion of Rohingya refugees (whose total population is not more than 6,000); transfer of Kathua rape and murder case to the CBI and withdrawal of minutes of a meeting wherein Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti instructed police and forest department against harassing pastoral nomads—who constitute over 11% of the state’s population—in the name of Gau Raksha (under Prevention of Cruelty Against Animal Act) and forest conservation (under Jammu and Kashmir Forest Conservation Act). All three issues are related to the imagined threats to the demographic profile of Jammu which is the only Hindu-majority area in the only Muslim-majority state of the country.

While Rohingyas are viewed as outsiders, Muslim nomadic tribals, citizens of India, find themselves locked in a conflict with local villagers over land and resources. The motive behind the heinous crime was to terrorise the Bakarwal community and drive them out of villages, as per the police probe.

So far as the issue of Rohingyas is concerned, the Chief Minister told the Assembly last year that they were never involved in any militancy-related incident. However, JKNPP, which has been supporting the Hindu Ekta Mach, last year put up signboards in Jammu city as part of its hate campaign against Rohingyas. BJP leader and state Assembly speaker Kavinder Gupta blamed Rohingyas for the recent Sunjuwan terror attack.

In Kathua, the Manch members are now addressing the dead girl as “Vaishno Devi—who must get justice” to justify their own demand for CBI probe. But if that be the case, the Manch should have been named Hindu-Muslim or for that matter Hindu-Bakarwal Ekta Manch. The protesting lawyers and the Manch did not support the demand for CBI probe when it was raised by the aggrieved family and community members when the incident took place and the local police were allegedly protecting the accused persons. Now the family has said on record that they are satisfied with the Crime Branch probe.

BJP leaders Choudhary Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga who had to resign from the state cabinet recently, blame the party leadership for sending them to the village. According to them, they went to Rasana village to pacify the people and stop “panic migration” after a “reign of terror was unleashed by the police.” However, both of them, in their speeches, had openly incited the local villagers and undermined the police.

In Kathua, the Manch members are now addressing the dead girl as “Vaishno Devi—who must get justice” to justify their own demand for CBI probe. But if that be the case, the Manch should have been named Hindu-Muslim or for that matter Hindu-Bakarwal Ekta Manch. The protesting lawyers and the Manch did not support the demand for CBI probe when it was raised by the aggrieved family and community members when the incident took place and the local police were allegedly protecting the accused persons

Kathua case: Contrasting coverage in Kashmir media and Jammu media

Even though the incident took place in the Jammu region, the Kathua rape and murder story was picked up by Kashmiri journalists and is being widely reported by media across the Pir Panjal range since. Coincidently, the news around the rape and murder case has been covered by a large section of Jammu media in a biased way. The news reports on “migration” is one example. Leading papers in Jammu published the same picture with the reports, to show purported migration. This was established through google reverse image search. The most circulated English daily of the region published the report with this outrageous headline: “Hindus migrate in Hiranagar under BJP rule.” And the picture had this caption: “Humiliated and harassed villagers of Rassana migrating towards safer place.”

But there are several other issues that have created trust-deficit between the two regions. While citizenship rights were granted to Uyghur Muslims from China in 1952 and Tibetan Muslims in 1959 after they were settled in Srinagar, refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir were not allowed to settle in Kashmir, which was climatically more suitable to them than Jammu. Paradoxically, the approach of successive governments has been altogether different when it comes to the long-standing demands of war refugees of 1947, 1965 and 1971 who have peacefully settled in Jammu. But Kashmiri separatists have always opposed the demand for citizenship rights to non-Muslim refugees in Jammu, arguing it would change the demography of the state.

Otherwise, living up to the legend that Jammu was founded by Raja Jambulochan after he saw a goat and a lion drinking water together at the Tawi River bank, Jammu has welcomed militancy-affected internally displaced people including Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims in the past, besides war refugees.

J&K summer capital in Srinagar and winter capital in Jammu inspired by nomads

Nomads seem to have inspired the Darbar Move—a century-old practice in which the state government functions for six months from each of the two capitals of the state. Apart from nomads, Jammu becomes home to tens of thousands of families from Kashmir—including civil secretariat employees and other peripheral snow-bound districts as winter sets in.

Ironically, the political leaders—who have been propagating the conspiracy theories and dubbing Muslim nomads as land encroachers, have themselves been land grabbers. Many of them have incited violence against nomads in the past as well. Questions need to be asked as to what happened to the probe into the much-hyped Roshni land scam, dubbed as the biggest ever land scandal in the state.

Had the current protests in Jammu been just about growing concerns over “changing demographic profile of Jammu”, then there would not have been silence over other migrants and refugees. So, why are only nomads being singled out?

The Kathua incident should indeed compel all the political parties to work together for empowering the marginalised nomadic tribal communities. This is a collective responsibility of all three regions of the state. A step in this direction would be the real tribute to the dead child. Pending that, the child’s lifeless body will continue to haunt all those who are seeking political mileage out of such a tragedy, such a heinous crime.