The new name of the elegant white colonial-era Guest House, Hari Niwas, had embedded itself in the imagination of every auto-rickshaw and taxi driver in Srinagar. Papa 2, code for prison number two, smelt of stale urine, vomit, blood and fear. It housed men who were soon to be killed, or for whom death would be deliverance. Long hours of beating, legs crushed by heavy rollers, red chillies shoved up the rectum, electric currents, immersion in freezing water: Papa II was a factory set up to produce confessions. Even imaginary ones—fables, tales, fantasies—would do.
Early one April morning in 1993, teenage student Masroof Sultan got on the bus from Batmaloo, headed to Sri Pratap College. Together with hundreds of other men, he was instead held in the course of what used to be called a crackdown, the detention of entire neighbourhoods to identify terrorism suspects. Three others, together with Masroof, were then held for special attention.
Following days of torture, which included electric shocks to his feet and genitals, the men were taken to a bridge near Rambagh, and shot at point-blank range. Three died. Amazingly, Masroof, with bullets through his legs and neck, survived to tell the story.
Earlier, Kashmir expert Manoj Joshi has written, Border Security Force assistant commandant Shamsher Singh had been killed along with naik MD Dutt, and lance-naiks KB Gupta and Rameshwar Dayal, when a mine went off under their jeep on a Batmaloo street. The perpetrators were never found, so the BSF decided to deliver vengeance to the neighbourhood itself.
The cult of torture
The videotaped torture of villagers from the small mountain hamlet of Topa Pir, three of whom ended up tossed on the roadside after being beaten to death inside the 48 Rashtriya Rifles camp at Dera ki Gali shows the grim reality old Kashmir lives. Four soldiers had been killed days earlier, as part of a string of sophisticated ambushes since 2021 by highly-trained jihadists who have claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers without a single perpetrator ever being located, arrested or killed.
Even as the torture videotapes circulated—likely, government officials believe, at the behest of local Rashtriya Rifles commanders, who thought they would serve to terrorise the community—New Delhi acted in unprecedented ways.
Brigadier Padam Acharya, on leave on the day of the killing, was moved to XVI Corps headquarters in Udhampur while a court of inquiry into his vicarious responsibility is investigated. Three other officers, including a lieutenant colonel and a colonel, will also be subjected to investigation, government sources told ThePrint. The police have filed an FIR on the murders.
This isn’t the first time extra-judicial killings by the military—which have become relatively rare since the savagery of the 1990s—are being investigated. Four labourers, all Hindus, were murdered by personnel of the 18 Rashtriya Rifles in 2006, a whistleblower alleged. The investigation went nowhere, and the whistleblower, Captain Samit Kohli, ended up dying by suicide under controversial circumstances.
Even credible evidence that multiple military units participated in the killings of labourers passed off as terrorists, which emerged in 2007, was hushed up.
From the last decade, though, things began to change—a consequence, perhaps, in the decline of violence in Jammu and Kashmir. A military court awarded the 62 Rashtriya Rifles’ captain Bhupinder Singh a life sentence for killing three migrant workers in 2020 and passing them off as terrorists.
In that case, XV corps commander Lieutenant-General BS Raju is understood to have insisted he would not tolerate criminal behaviour by personnel under his command. The sentence has been stayed, pending appeal.
The Rajouri killings mark just the second case since 2020—and the first, ever, where action has been immediately taken against high-ranking officers. There is no clarity on exactly what transpired—both Northern Army commander Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi and Director-General of Police RR Swain were in the area when the torture and killings took place—but the government has shown it seems willing to break with the past and get to the truth.
Army officials have long claimed action of this kind will degrade morale. This stands the truth on its head: extrajudicial killing, whether it is driven by impotence to detect the real perpetrators, or greed for reward and medals, only insults the vast bulk of honourable, hard-working soldiers.
Also read: 4 years on, Kashmir is changing. All because of Modi-picked Manoj Sinha’s healing touch
Failings in combat
Ending military impunity, though, is just one part of the question: The killings at Topa Pir also raise hard questions about the competence of military tactics and the quality of intelligence. Government sources say troops were engaged in a cordon-and-search operation in the Bafliaz forests, sparked off by the detection of a satellite phone active in the area. Four soldiers, including two captains, were killed after being similarly lured into an ambush last year near the same area.
Local Gujjar residents had played a critical role in military operations against the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Pir Panjal mountains before 2003, setting up special militia to fight terrorism. In recent years, though, the Scheduled Tribe Gujjar-Bakarwal community has become increasingly alienated, because the government decided to extend reservations to Paharis, made up of both upper-caste Muslims and Hindus.
Frustrated rank-and-file soldiers, operating without high-grade local information, have increasingly turned their wrath on Gujjar-Bakkarwals for failing to provide intelligence on terrorist movements. In the Topa Pir case, intelligence sources have told ThePrint, local soldiers were—erroneously—informed that a wedding feast in the village was a special dinner for visiting terrorists. The rumour fuelled rage.
The attacks on the Army at Pir Panjal, interestingly, seem designed to send a message, rather than cause indiscriminate harm. For all the talk of a rise in violence in Kashmir, data from the independent South Asia Terrorism Portal suggests this isn’t the reality. Killings of civilians are lower than in 2022, and killings of security force personnel only marginally higher. In general, levels of violence from 2019, when Kashmir’s special constitutional status was revoked, have been similar to previous years.
Even though little hard evidence exists to make the case, some intelligence personnel speculate that the skilled ambushes on the Pir Panjal are being carried out by Pakistan Army special forces-trained jihadists, to make the point that the country is willing to raise the stakes in Kashmir, if needed. India is also rumoured to be running cross-border assassination attacks, another possible motivation for carrying out retaliatory ambushes.
Whatever the motivations, the Indian security establishment’s failure to locate perpetrators speaks ill of its capabilities should violence directed by Pakistan escalates. Torturing and killing civilians won’t solve this problem—and alienates even pro-India constituencies, like the Gujjar-Bakkarwal.
Also read: Rajouri killing shows a worrying pattern. Terrorists are trapping Army soldiers
Confronting torture
The use of torture in counter-insurgency isn’t unique to the Indian Army: British and Australian soldiers in Afghanistan as well as Americans in Iraq have only in recent months been found guilty of worse crimes. Yet, the indiscriminate, savage use of torture in Papa II—an industrial-scale version of many contemporary Indian police stations—even earned it a kind of international reputation, and not just among human rights organisations. The punishment section at the notorious United States-run Guantanamo Bay was nicknamed The India Block by the prisoners.
Like the colonial masters who taught them, Indian police and security forces have used terror and pain as tools to coerce societies, not to ensure the primacy of criminal justice.
Even if a film version of torture in custody shows muscular police officers dragging the truth of terrorists, that is rarely the reality. The indiscriminate use of violence in the 1990s—running from beating entire neighbourhoods to firing on peaceful processions and burning down bazaars—did not intimidate Kashmiri civilians, or yield significant intelligence. Their only outcome was to leave a legacy of hatred.
The government’s decision to hold officers accountable for crimes against civilians is a courageous step in the right direction, which sets new standards for India’s police and military. The challenge now is to build a competent, and accountable, security system that can deal with crises still to come.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
It is challenging for civilized people fighting monsters not to become another monster.