New Delhi: The 9-year crusade for justice against Aijaz Ahmad Sheikh, a Kashmiri faith healer who has been convicted of sexually abusing two children, began in an apple orchard when a 15-year-old child told his father he would not go back to Sheikh’s house to “talk to djinns”.
Sheikh, known locally as Pir Baba, would tell his followers that he could rid them of their problems by conversing with djinns (genies or spirits). But, for that, they would have to leave their child behind at his house because he could only talk to those djinns through children. When the 15-year-old confided in his father that he was being abused, the skeletons began to crawl out of Sheikh’s closet.
And, in a ruling on 18 February, the Sopore court convicted the faith healer under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) and sentenced him to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 10,000 for the named victims. The landmark ruling also opened up the pathway for further legal action.
“The journey for justice was more traumatising for me—for us all, as victims—than the abuse itself,” said one 37-year-old survivor, called Gaashah at home, who now lives in Europe. “We never expected the judiciary to let us down for so long. If this case had happened in the West, Sheikh would not have been allowed to have so much access to children during the trial.”
After a First Information Report (FIR) was first registered on the allegations from the 15-year-old, referred to as PW8 in the court judgment, the police held a press conference inviting other witnesses to step forward. The charge sheet was finally filed on 16 June 2017.
That was when Gaashah was able to formally pursue justice. He only came to terms with his abuse and told his family 14 years after he encountered Sheikh. By this time, he couldn’t pursue the case for various reasons, including a paucity of evidence.
Speaking to ThePrint, Gaashah recalled the conversation he had with PW8 outside his father’s apple orchard at the time. He apologised to PW8 for not speaking up about Sheikh’s abuse earlier, but the 15-year-old’s words rang clear: “I want to fight the case.”
The judgment has given the survivors of Sheikh’s abuse another chance at justice for themselves.
Mir Wajahat, the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Sopore, has allowed other survivors—who, like Gaashah, were registered as witnesses in the present case—to file separate FIRs against Sheikh.
“If this judgment serves as a catalyst for those silent voices–who have long endured unspeakable trauma, struggled in the shadows of despair, and now look toward the law with the last vestiges of hope–then justice has, in some measure, already begun to prevail,” the judgment says.
Gaashah hopes this will snowball into more survivors coming forward and taking legal action. At least 12 families have approached the court, though authorities estimate the number of survivors to be higher.
“Yes, this is a victory. It’s the first step towards something nice. But the road to this victory has been very, very rough,” said Gaashah.
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A long legal battle
Known for solving people’s problems by talking to djinns, Aijaz Ahmed Sheikh was a locally powerful religious figure. Families would trust their children with him, unknowingly subjecting them to years of trauma disguised as spiritual healing. The oldest survivor who has spoken out dates the abuse back to 1998.
Many were scared to come forward because of Sheikh’s powerful connections and the social stigma surrounding child sexual abuse, according to Gaashah. He was arrested in 2016 after multiple complaints about sexual abuse were filed by survivors following the police press conference but was released on bail within 29 days. Delays in taking action continued till 2017.
“What’s truly shocking is that the court allowed him to continue having access to children after he was released on bail,” said Gaashah. “He could have continued his profession of faith healing, but without access to children.”
It was a long legal battle, according to the survivors’ legal team. In the intervening years, Gaashah kept up a relentless volley of social media posts talking about Sheikh and updating his followers on the status of the case on a Facebook group called ‘Prevent Child Sexual Abuse,’ which has now grown into a global community of 10,000 members.
“Conviction or acquittal? We will know in the afternoon. Stay tuned!” he posted on 18 February. A few hours later, he posted, “Aijaz Sheikh Convicted under section 377 of Ranbir Penal Code,” with a smiling emoji and the hashtag “Justice Prevailed”.
“Because such cases are so hard to argue, positive judgments like this are really valuable. In this case, even getting court hearings was a challenge because of factors like the COVID-19 pandemic or the political lockdown in Kashmir,” Karuvaki Mohanty, a programme manager at iProbono India—a social justice organisation that specialises in litigation and supported the survivors—told ThePrint.
“There were multiple instances of the judges and the public prosecutors (PP) being changed, and survivors would lose hope or simply move on with their lives.”
Pursuing social justice in a place like Kashmir
Gaashah counts six judges who came and went as the case unfolded. His testimony in March 2019 took a gruelling six hours and was very emotional, and he remembers shivering on the stand and asking to sit.
“These things matter in cases like this,” he said. “It was hard enough to articulate my abuse in such detail. It’s impossible for the judge who is finally deciding this case to know those emotions.”
What’s more, is the difficulty of addressing social justice issues in a place like Kashmir. Legal action in the case kept being delayed as the Valley shut down over different political developments—first due to the Burhan Wani case, then the Pulwama incident, followed by the abrogation of Article 370 and the coronavirus pandemic.
At one point, the investigating officer in the case couldn’t attend a hearing because he’d been transferred to Pulwama and was busy carrying out operations there. It left a painful choice for the state between catching a militant and speeding up the process of justice.
“This case was very eventful,” said Gaashah ruefully. “A lot of things happened. But judicial incompetence tops the list. It felt like we were living in some sort of primitive society where the justice system was all over the place.”
Despite the delays and roadblocks, however, Mohanty said that the judge noted that the “witness statements in the case were both compelling as well as consistent”.
Further legal action
The judgment is unique because it opens the path for other survivors to pursue legal action against Sheikh, according to Mohanty.
“It says that they have an unequivocal right to seek justice independently, which necessitates separate trials and FIRs,” she said. “It, therefore, directed the police to file separate FIRs for each of these survivors and the District Legal Services Authority to give them legal aid.”
“It takes into account the time delay in such cases coming to trial. So, it really opens the door for other survivors or their families to seek justice.”
But Gaashah points to an important caveat: that many will still be scared to come forward to file an FIR in Kashmir.
“Survivors don’t speak up because they dread this process. The court has directed us to file FIRs, but is it easy for us to do it?” he asked, especially now that he lives in Europe.
Another survivor he knows lives in Dubai.
“Make the process easy for us. If the process is made easy, then more victims will come out. Of course, his victims want Sheikh to be put behind bars, but he can only file an FIR if they make it easy for us.”
Mohanty also says that the justice system should ensure that survivors are protected and compensated to some degree for the trauma they have experienced. “It was disturbing that Sheikh was out on bail for large portions of the trial. With his influence in the area, this should have been avoided. Measures should be taken to prevent him from influencing or intimidating survivors and their families,” she said.
It’s also important to raise awareness about the verdict and encourage people to speak about abuse, said Mohanty. She added that Gaashah’s relentless activity kept everyone connected to the case.
He posted one more photograph on the day the 123-page judgment came, with the hashtag “Poetic Justice.” It was of a poem written by the chief judicial magistrate, titled ‘Whispers of Faith, Echoes of Fear,’ that was included at the end of the judgment:
‘Years will pass, the wounds remain,
The echoes whisper through the pain.
For what was torn can’t just repair,
A soul once bound floats in the air.
But truth will rise, the stars will call,
No shadow stands where justice falls.
And though the scars may never fade,
The dawn will break—unafraid.’
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)