A wife's appeal for justice
I am the wife of Mohammad Afzal, the man accused of conspiring to
attack the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. Afzal has been
condemned to death by the Sessions Court Judge, S N Dhingra and his
death sentence has been confirmed by the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi.
Now the case has come up before the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India.
All over India people have condemned the attack on Parliament. And I
agree that it was a terrorist attack and must be condemned. However,
it is also important that the people accused of such a serious crime
be given a fair trial and their story be fully heard before they are
punished. I believe that no one has heard my husband's story and he
has so far never been represented in the court properly.
I appeal to you to hear our story and then decide for yourselves
whether justice has teen done. Afzal and my story is the story of many
young Kashmiri couples. Our story represents the tragedy facing our
people.
In 1990 Afzal was attracted to the movement led by the JKLF, like
thousands of other youth. He went to Pakistan for training and stayed
there for a little while. However, he was disillusioned by the
differences between different groups and he did not support
pro-Pakistani groups. He stayed there only three months without
getting any training. Afzal returned to Kashmir and he went to Delhi
to pursue his studies. He always wanted to study and before he joined
the movement he was doing his MBBS.
My husband wanted to return to normal life and with that intention he
surrendered to the BSF. The BSF Commandant refused to give him his
certificate till he had motivated two others to surrender. And Afzal
motivated two other militants to surrender. He was given a certificate
stating that he was a surrendered militant. You will not perhaps
realise that it is very difficult to live as a surrendered militant in
Kashmir but he decided to live with his family in Kashmir. In 1997 he
started a small business of medicines and surgical instruments in
Kashmir. The next year we were married. He was 28 years old and I was
18 years.
Throughout the period that we lived in Kashmir the Indian security
forces continuously harassed Afzal and told him to spy on people they
suspected of being militants. One Major Ram Mohan Roy of 22 Rashtriya
Rifles tortured Afzal and gave him electric shocks in his private
parts. He was humiliated and abused.
The Indian security forces used to regularly take Afzal to their camps
and torture him. They wanted to extract information from him. One
night the Indian security forces came to our home and abused all of us
and took away Afzal to their camp; another time he was taken to the
STF (State Task Force) camp Palhalan Pattan.
Some days later they took him to the Humhama STF camp. In that camp
the officers, DSP Vinay Gupta and DSP Darinder Singh demanded Rs one
lakh. We are not a rich family and we had to sell everything,
including the little gold I got on my marriage to save Afzal from the
torture.
Afzal was kept in freezing water and petrol was put into his anus. One
officer Shanti Singh hanged my husband upside down for hours naked and
in the cold. They gave electric shocks in his penis and he had to have
treatment for days.
You will think that Afzal must be involved in some militant activities
that is why the security forces were torturing him to extract
information. But you must understand the situation in Kashmir, every
man, woman and child has some information on the movement even if they
are not involved. By making people into informers they turn brother
against brother, wife against husband and children against parents.
Afzal wanted to live quietly with his family but the STF would not
allow him.
You should also know that the STF force is notorious in Kashmir for
extorting money from the people and they have become so infamous that
when Mufti Sayed became the Chief Minister he promised in his election
manifesto to disband the entire force. The STF is known for human
rights violations including killing people in their custody and
brutal, senseless, inhuman torture.
It was under these conditions that forced Afzal to leave his home,
family and settle in Delhi. He struggled hard to earn a living and he
had decided to bring me and our four-year old son, Ghalib, to Delhi.
Like any other family we dreamed of living together peacefully and
bringing up our children, giving them a good education and seeing them
grow up to be good human beings. That dream was cut short when once
again the STF got hold of my husband in Delhi.
The STF told my husband to bring one man Mohammad to Delhi from
Kashmir. He met Mohammad and one other man Tariq there at the STF
camp. He did not know anything about the men and he had no idea why he
was being asked to do the job. He has told all this to the court but
the court chose to believe half his statement about bringing Mohammad
but not the bit that he was told to do so by the STF.
There was no one to represent Afzal in the lower court. The court
appointed a lawyer who never took instructions from Afzal, or cross
examined the prosecution witnesses. That lawyer was communal and
showed his hatred for my husband. When my husband told Judge Dhingra
that he did not want that lawyer the judge ignored him. In fact my
husband went totally undefended in the trial court. When ever my
husband wished to say something the judge would not hear him out and
the judge showed his communal bias in open court.
In the High Court one human rights lawyer offered to represent Afzal
and my husband accepted. But instead of defending Afzal the lawyer
began by asking the court not to hang Afzal but to kill him by a
lethal injection. My husband never expressed any desire to die. He has
maintained that he has been entrapped by the STF. My husband was
shocked but he had no way of changing his lawyer while being locked up
in the high security jail.
It was only after the High Court judgement was pronounced he got to
know about the way the lawyer had represented him. Afzal refused to
accept the same lawyer for his appeal in the Supreme Court. I had no
way of getting Afzal a lawyer. I do not know anyone in Delhi. Finally
Afzal wrote to the Defence Committee set up for Mr Geelani. I am
annexing his letter. And the Defence Committee helped Afzal to get a
senior lawyer, Mr Sushil Kumar. However, the Supreme Court cannot go
into the evidence and so I do not know what will happen.
I appeal to you to ensure that my husband is not condemned to death
and he is ensured a fair trial. Surely your conscience will not allow
you to be a party to the death of a fellow human being who has not
been represented in the court and who has not had a chance to tell his
story? The police have made him falsely confess before the media even
before the trial started. They humiliated him, beat him, tortured him
and even urinated in his mouth. I feel deep shame to talk about these
things in public but circumstances have forced me. It has taken a lot
of courage for me to put all this on paper but I do so for the sake of
my child who is now six years old.
Will you speak out at the injustice my husband has faced? Will you
speak out on my behalf? I am of course fighting for my husband's life,
for the life of my son's father. But I also speak as a Kashmiri woman
who is losing faith in Indian democracy and its ability to be fair to
Kashmiri Muslims.
*Tabassum Srinagar, September
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