Tag Archives: BSF

Countryside, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Excavation, Frontiers, Government

January 6, 1993 – A Town Torched: Remembering the Sopore Massacre Twenty Years After: Sameer Bhat

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Guest post by SAMEER BHAT

In Memory of the Massacre in Sopore, Kashmir, by the 94th Battalion of the Border Security Force on January 6, 1993.

[YouTube Video – Compiled from various sources – including a report by Savyasachi Jain, now with NDTV, for Eyewitness – a VHS delivered video news magazine active in the early 1990s.]

There was sound of a huge bang that morning, like someone blowing up a cartful of dynamite. Just before the cockcrow. Most of the townspeople were asleep. The dawn prayers had thin attendance, mostly because it gets very cold in January. By nine o’clock a military patrol was out, doing rounds of the main marketplace. Suddenly gunmen emerged from a narrow alley and shot random bullets at the party before quickly disappearing in the maze that old Sopore is. Taken rather off guard, the security detail ran back to their barracks only to emerge again as Frankenstein’s monsters, spitting hell fire. In the next fifty odd minutes, they murdered fifty five people in cold blood. And burnt the town down. Continue reading January 6, 1993 – A Town Torched: Remembering the Sopore Massacre Twenty Years After: Sameer Bhat →

Violence/Conflict

On Torture and Testimonies

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I was going to write out a reply to the comments on Shuddha’s post, Kashmir’s Abu Gharaiab, but thought I would expand it into a larger post.

I’d like to make clear that I have been to Kashmir only once – and that too for a few hours in the aftermath of the earthquake, so if anyone writes back saying, “I should see the ground reality in Kashmir”; I concede that point straight off the bat.  I should see the ground reality in Kashmir; we all should.

However, over the last eight months, I have had the opportunity to interact very closely with central paramilitary forces like the BSF and CRPF in the course  of their deployment in Chhattisgarh, where I work. Many of the men conducting anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh have served in Kashmir and the North-East theatres.

Over the last three days, I and a reporter from the Times of India have been working on a story in which a group of adivasis from two villages in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district have accused the BSF of torturing a number of young men and women from their respective villages by beating them and also administering electric shocks.

Continue reading On Torture and Testimonies →