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| Quit Kashmir : outsider labourers warned after rape incident | | |
ET REPORTER
Srinagar, July 25: In a replay of the Assam locals versus non-local controversy, people in north Kashmir are forcing labourers from outside Jammu and Kashmir to evacuate their residential and commercial properties following revelations by police that a Bengali and a Rajisthani labourer were among the four persons who had confessed of raping and later murdering a 16-year-old school girl in a north Kashmir village.
Police on Tuesday stated that four suspects – Azher Ahmad Mir, Mohd Sadiq Mir (Both Kashmiris and notorious for their criminal activities), Jehangir of District Maida West Bengal and Suresh Kumar of District Junjnu in Rajesthan – had confessed that they overpowered the school girl, Tabinda Gani of village Batapora in Langate Handwara area of north Kashmir Kupwara district, after spotting her on a lesser frequented road that passes through orchards and raped her several times before slitting her throat.
Though Public anger was already on rise against the non-local labourers, the police statement detailing the sequence of events in the crime added as fuel to the fire. Reports said that at least a hundred properties had been evacuated in Langate area alone and the properties include 40 shops rented out to non-locals who had set up tea stalls, sweet shops, vehicle repair shops etc. at these places. Others had been given a week's time to vacate the commercial and residential properties.
Heavy protests had taken place in the entire area for four consecutive days when news broke that the teenage girl's throat slit body had been recovered from an orchard in the area on 20th of this month, coincidentally a Friday. Police immediately rounded up sixteen people in this connection and started investigating the matter. Though police is believed to have made a breakthrough in the case two days earlier, making the culprits' identity public was resisted till Tuesday fearing attacks on the families of the accused.
Public in the area, however, had sensed that some non-local labourers were involved in the crime and so anger kept mounting with calls being made that all non-local labourers should be pushed out of the valley. Separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who reached the area on Tuesday while bluffing the police deployed at his house for keeping him in house arrest, also called for "cordially asking the non-local labourers to leave the valley,"
"We are leaving as people look at us with an eye of suspicion," said Sonu from Utter Pradesh, who had set up a sweet shop at Langate evacuated today. Though no militant threats were reported, threats from the locals were widely reported. Even the Bar Association of Kupwara had decided not to advocate the cases of the four accused.
Though two locals were also involved in the crime, people in the area say that social evils and crime was on rise since non-local labourers started coming to valley in large numbers. Police said that the four had met in the outskirts of Langate at Batapora-Wader at around 1 pm on the day of the murder. "While people were busy with the Friday congregation prayers, the four found the opportunity right and stationed themselves on the road leading to Battapora where they ate lunch and drunk. It by then that they found the deceased walking alone. The four followed her and caught her unawares. While one accused caught her from behind and closed her mouth, others caught the victim and dragged her to the nearby Maize fields orchards," police stated. "The culprits, while narrating the story admitted that the victim had screamed in pain while trying to resist and gone unconscious while she was raped. The four decided to kill her fearing that the girl shall narrate the story at home," police added.
An estimated workforce of two lakh persons travels to the valley in summers from northern states like Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Bengal to work in the valley. While a part of it is skilled labour, rest of them are semiskilled and even unskilled. Even a chunk is seen begging on streets across the valley. While their stay in the valley has till now been largely peaceful, except for a few isolated attacks by militants over the years, people in general feel that the labour comes with a lot of crime that includes drug peddling, prostitution and even malicious intention of molestation and rape
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