Early morning on August 22, Nayeema was at home with her mother when she saw some boys scaling the main gate of their house and escaping from the backyard. The boys were followed by soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force and policemen. Panicked, the 26-year-old woman hid in the washroom.
All night, there had been clashes between the security forces and the residents of the Habak Shanpora area on the outskirts of Srinagar, where Nayeema lived. The area, which sits on the extended banks of Dal lake, had witnessed protests in the days after the Indian government unilaterally scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories.
Anticipating raids by government security forces, the young men of Habak Shanpora had barricaded the roads leading into the neighbourhood. “They had also lit bonfires to beat the night cold,” said a resident, on the condition of anonymity.
But the CRPF soldiers forced their way into the area, provoking a retaliation from the young men. “The clashes started at around 2 am and continued throughout the night,” said one resident. “All the mosques in the neighbouring villages were blaring announcements, asking [the people living there] to come to our rescue.”
Eventually, the security forces were unable to detain or arrest anyone. But residents say 20 people were injured in the clashes, with at least 10 hit by pellets, two of them in the eyes.
Away from the street clashes, there was a quieter use of force – inside homes where women and children were hiding.
Abuses and beatings
Nayeema weaves shawls to complement the earnings of her two brothers. The family’s one-storey house sits on the end of a narrow lane in the area. The night of the clashes, both her brothers fled home to evade arrests. Nayeema was alone with her 70-year-old mother, Jana Begum.
Around 6.30 am in the morning, when she saw the CRPF soldiers, she ran into the washroom.
“I was inside the washroom when CRPF men entered our house compound and started breaking our window panes,” she recalled. Despite her fright, she stepped out of the washroom, caught hold of her mother and brought her inside.
“But the CRPF men started kicking the washroom door and hurled abuses on us,” she said. The soldiers seemed to think the women were hiding the male members of the family.
Afraid that they might enter the kitchen and damage the family’s food stocks, Nayeema opened the door. She claims she argued with the CRPF men and asked them to leave her house. “I can’t even dare to explain the expletives they hurled on me,” she said.
Then, the beating began. “A CRPF man kicked me in the back multiple times,” she alleged. “When I screamed, he took out his gun and was about to hit me with the gun butt, when a local J&K policeman intervened. He stopped the CRPF man and asked him to leave me alone.”
The soldiers eventually left. Nayeema’s mother is relieved that the CRPF men only “beat up” her daughter.
“We were only two women here when they entered,” Jana Begum said. “God forbid, what if my daughter was alone. In the washroom, a person can be in any condition. Still, they tried to break it with their boots. Anything could have happened.”
Visible damage
Since August 5, several accounts have emerged of Kashmiri men facing beatings from the security forces, with many backing up their allegations by showing bruised backs and legs. But women have been largely out of sight.
Nayeema, however, wasn’t the only woman in Habak Shanpora to get injured on August 22. Fatima Bano was outside her house that morning when security personnel finally managed to enter the neighbourhood.
“She was trying to take her two children inside her house when a CRPF personnel fired a teargas shell directly at her leg,” said Bano’s husband, Farooq Ahmad, who does pashmina embroidery for a living.
Bano had to undergo a surgery in her leg. “I have spent almost Rs 7,000 on her medication so far,” said Ahmad.
The signs of what unfolded in the neighbourhood that night are still visible in the glass-littered streets. The broken window panes and doors are hard to miss. Expecting more raids, the residents have decided to leave them unrepaired.
But the spokesperson of Central Reserve Police Force in Jammu and Kashmir, Sanjay Sharma, denied what took place that night constituted a raid.
“This is not a raid per se,” he said. Denying the allegations of vandalism and assault on women, he added: “An incident like this would have become noticeable very soon. If it happened on August 22, it would have been all over the media etc. At the most, this incident looks like a mere rumour or just an allegation.”
Moving on, silently
After that night, the neighbourhood has been quiet. “Our elders went to the local police station in Nigeen and gave a written bond to the police that there won’t be any protests in the area from now on,” said one resident.
Despite the bond, the police arrested three young men of Habak Shanpora while they were in the Soura area. “They had gone to Soura hospital for some treatment,” the resident said. The three were subsequently shifted to Nigeen police station, he added.
Meanwhile, at her home, Nayeema wants to forget everything about the incident. She is uncomfortable giving any more details about the nature of her injury.
“I haven’t shown my bruises to anyone except my mother and brother,” Nayeema said. “I didn’t even go to a doctor because I am not comfortable showing them to some other person.”
She was treating her injury with an ointment she had bought from a medical store. “It will recover on its own in sometime,” she said.