The Indian soldiers descended on Bashir Ahmed Dar’s house in southern Kashmir on Aug. 10, a few days after the government in New Delhi stripped the disputed Himalayan region of its statehood and launched a crackdown. Over the next 48 hours, the 50-year-old plumber said he was subjected to two separate rounds of beatings by soldiers.
They demanded that he find his younger brother, who had joined rebels opposing India’s presence in the Muslim majority region, and persuade him to surrender or else “face the music.”
In the second beating, at a military camp, Dar said he was struck with sticks by three soldiers until he was unconscious. He woke up at home, “unable to sit on my bruised and bloodied buttocks and aching back,” he added.
But it wasn’t over. On Aug. 14, soldiers returned to his house in the village of Heff Shirmal and destroyed his family’s supply of rice and other foodstuffs by mixing it with fertilizer and kerosene.
“Helpless, I heard my sons scream as soldiers started beating them up mercilessly in the middle of the road,” Sofi said.
AP News
Report Written By Aijaz Hussain
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Associated Press writer Emily Schmall in New Delhi contributed to this report. Call The New Delhi Bureau and thank them: (94-11) 230-4940
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