Ali Ahmed’s Work Published in ‘The Kashmir Times’

Research Fellow, IDSA, Mr Ali Ahmed’s analytical report titled ‘AFSPA: A question of justice' was published in ‘The Kashmir Times’.

Excerpt

A report in The Hindu has it that, ‘In the past four years alone, the Home Ministry has rejected at least 42 requests to sanction the prosecution of military personnel found by the police to have engaged in crimes such as murder, homicide and rape in Kashmir…’. Since the government does not have a written policy, its policy has to be inferred from its actions. In this case its action, or inaction, suggests that it is wary of permitting prosecutions of members of its armed forces, even though it has the power to do so under the AFSPA Section 6 (for North East) and Section 7 (for J&K).

The report acquires significance due to the Supreme Court pulling up the Army on the eve of Republic Day for stalling the prosecution in the 2000 Pathribal encounter case, initiated by the CBI against five officers. This is one among a few high profile cases that include Macchel in which three men killed were portrayed as crossing the Line of Control; the Malom case that provoked Irom Sharmila’s fast and the Manorama Devi case that had led to the Jeevan Reddy committee review of the operation of the AFSPA in the North East.
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