Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Makhan Din stands inside an empty mosque in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Kathua district to report his final video message on a cell phone.
Carrying a skullcap and a blue-and-white sports activities jacket, the bearded 25-year-old says he’s about to “sacrifice” his life in order that nobody else within the area is subjected to “torture” by the police, who suspected him of “being related to militants”, the time period authorities use for rebels combating in opposition to the Indian rule.
In the course of the grainy four-minute video recorded on February 5, Din is seen selecting a duplicate of the Quran from a shelf at his again and placing it on his head to pledge he had “by no means seen” any rebels as he recounts the horrors he endured in police custody the night time earlier than. He then locations the holy e book again and takes out a plastic packet of pesticide from his pocket, his lips consistently praying to God.
“I must take this drugs out of compulsion and it’ll finish my life. I’ll die in order that different individuals will likely be saved after me. Oh Allah, settle for my sacrifice. Hold my household completely satisfied, all the time, Oh Allah. Save me from the punishment of the grave … You watch every part … Ship angels to take my soul from contained in the mosque. Please forgive me,” he says as he switches off the telephone digicam.
In video: Earlier than his demise by sucide, Makhan Din, 25, a tribal man from Kathua’s Bilawar space filmed the act, saying he’s dying by suicide in order that nobody else is subjected to “torture” and “humiliation” by the police the best way he was subjected. pic.twitter.com/b5zWw0gVVX
— Kashmir Dot Com (KDC) (@kashmirdotcom) February 6, 2025
After recording his message, Din consumed the pesticide and made a final name to his elder brother, Lal Din, informing him that he had despatched him a video via WhatsApp – and likewise that he had killed himself.
In a press release on February 7, police claimed Din had a “variety of suspicious contacts in Pakistan and different overseas nations”, and denied he was tortured in custody or had any harm on his physique. “He was questioned after which received uncovered, went house, and dedicated suicide,” it stated. The Jammu district administration is investigating Din’s demise and allegations of torture.
In the meantime, the haunting video had reached tens of hundreds of cellphones and TV screens in and out of doors the area, heightening tensions and bringing again recollections of torture and different atrocities within the scenic Himalayan valley, the place an armed rise up has been occurring for many years.
Since independence from British rule and partition right into a Hindu-majority India and primarily Muslim Pakistan in 1947, the complete Kashmir territory has been claimed by each the nations who rule over elements of it. The 2 nuclear powers have fought three full-scale wars over the territory and have positioned tens of hundreds of troopers throughout its snowy frontier.
India accuses Pakistan of coaching and financing the rise up on the Indian aspect, a cost denied by Islamabad, which says it solely gives diplomatic assist to the motion on worldwide platforms. New Delhi has deployed greater than 500,000 troopers in Kashmir, making it one of the vital militarised areas on the planet, the place the Indian forces have been given particular powers and impunity to crush the rise up.
Residents say New Delhi’s grip over the area has tightened since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing authorities revoked Article 370 of the Indian structure – which granted a diploma of autonomy to Indian-administered Kashmir – and divided the area into two federally-governed union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The federal government claimed the transfer would carry “normalcy”, peace and growth to the area, because it pushed a collection of legal guidelines and insurance policies Kashmiris worry are aimed toward altering the demography of the Muslim-majority area.
The 2019 transfer was additionally accompanied by a months-long safety lockdown and a ban on public protests, as hundreds of individuals – college students, legal professionals, activists, and even pro-India politicians – had been thrown into jails. Greater than 5 years later, nevertheless, peace continues to elude the restive streets of the area.
However Din’s alleged torture by the police adopted by his demise by suicide has worsened the worry amongst residents. “It was scary to see a person resort to killing himself, regardless of figuring out the gravity of the punishment. Our faith [Islam] warns us strongly in opposition to the act he dedicated,” a 22-year-old man stated, requesting anonymity as he feared reprisal for chatting with the media.
The younger man stated Din’s determined act “made him query the understanding he holds onto”.
“I really feel privileged for not with the ability to think about the ache he will need to have gone via. Instances like his are not often talked about right here. Most information is short-lived lately. Occasions have modified in Kashmir,” he stated. “It’s the start of the tip, actually.”
Military kills truck driver
A day after Din took his personal life, Waseem Ahmad Mir, a 32-year-old truck driver belonging to northern Kashmir’s Sopore district, was killed by the military.
In a press release, the military stated Mir had jumped a safety checkpoint on the Srinagar-Baramulla freeway. The truck didn’t cease “regardless of repeated warnings”, it stated, additional claiming that Mir’s automobile was chased for 23km (14 miles) earlier than he was shot.
Nevertheless, Mir’s household rejected the military’s model of occasions.
“The military says they chased him for 23km, however the [superintendent of police] instructed us he was chased for 35km. We additionally need to know that when he needed to go to Srinagar, why was the automobile within the [opposite] path, going to Baramulla?” Mir’s cousin instructed the Indian Categorical newspaper, alleging contradictions within the statements made by the military and the police.
“His garments had been within the filth. We need to know if they’d crushed or tortured him earlier than the killing.”
‘A number of worry’
The deaths of the 2 civilians attributable to alleged excesses by the Indian forces got here as greater than 500 Kashmiris had been detained for the killing of a retired military officer, Manzoor Ahmad Wagay, a neighborhood resident, on February 3. Wagay was shot lifeless by suspected rebels, and his spouse and niece injured in south Kashmir’s Kulgam.
Following the killing, authorities rounded up younger males from a number of districts in south Kashmir, most of them earlier charged with collaborating in anti-government protests or the armed rise up. Pictures of the armed forces frisking automobiles and other people at numerous checkpoints went viral on social media.
“I’m feeling scared after the current crackdown as a result of it looks as if we will not stay in our personal Kashmir, or if we do, it must be in fixed worry. You by no means know when the military may come and take you away, and then you definately endure regardless of being harmless,” a 21-year-old from Pulwama district instructed Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity.
“There’s quite a lot of worry right here,” he stated, including that many younger males obtained calls from military camps, “summoning” them. He stated it was “terrifying”.
“On prime of that, there’s household stress; our households get scared. When somebody steps out of the home, there’s no certainty if they are going to return,” he stated. “If we need to proceed residing right here, we have to be ready to depart the second they summon us.”
Al Jazeera reached out to a number of individuals who had been lately detained or questioned, however they feared “penalties” in the event that they talked to the media.
“I don’t understand how I used to be let go. My thoughts is free proper now and if I discuss, I’ll stay in yet one more worry and anxiousness: of being caught as a result of I spoke to you,” stated certainly one of them.
Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer from south Kashmir’s Shopian district, stated the police can detain somebody on affordable suspicions, however that detention can’t exceed 24 hours, inside which the suspect must be produced earlier than a courtroom and have the grounds of his arrest defined to him and his family members knowledgeable about it.
“To detain round 500 individuals, because the experiences recommend, for investigation appears to be a case of abuse of legislation and a case of police overreach. We’ve typically seen the varied protections and rights obtainable to the detainees being violated by investigative businesses,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Ram Puniyani, a Mumbai-based author and activist, stated the police can’t detain such a lot of individuals on mere suspicion. “There have to be some authorized facet of it that they aren’t following. This can be a clear-cut human rights violation,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
‘Our blood shouldn’t be low cost’
The mass detentions and the deaths of the 2 civilians have additionally outraged regional politicians, who’ve questioned New Delhi’s claims of a “return of normalcy” after 2019.
“My concern is that the police flout the very rule of legislation they’re speculated to uphold and shield these individuals, that it one way or the other turns into so devious that the persons are afraid of them, and never the militants. It’s a very warped system,” Iltija Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Get together (PDP) instructed Al Jazeera as she visited Kathua to satisfy Din’s household.
Calling the current incidents “extremely unlucky”, regional Chief Minister Omar Abdullah – elected in October final yr within the area’s first meeting elections in a decade – stated he has taken up the matter with New Delhi and “insisted that each incidents are inquired into in a time-bound, clear method”.
“The regional authorities may also order its personal inquiries,” he added. Nevertheless, within the post-2019 Kashmir, the powers of the chief minister over police have been drastically curtailed because the division is immediately managed by the federal authorities.
On the deaths of the 2 civilians, Altaf Thakur, spokesman for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) in Kashmir, instructed Al Jazeera his social gathering desires to type a high-level committee to analyze them and “perpetrators to be punished”.
“If an harmless particular person is killed, whether or not he’s from Kathua or elsewhere, it can’t be tolerated.”
Aakar Patel, chair of the Amnesty Worldwide rights group in India, instructed Al Jazeera the Indian authorities has “no real interest in the human rights of Kashmiris”.
“It has not responded to or responded negatively to each single chargesheet filed by [regional] police in opposition to armed forces personnel since 1989. It has by no means ever withdrawn the immunity of anybody underneath AFSPA safety,” he stated, referring to the Armed Forces Particular Powers Act, a draconian Indian legislation that grants its troopers impunity in opposition to authorized ramifications of their acts within the area.
Patel stated there must be a reconsideration of “insurance policies in place since 1989”, which have seen the Kashmiri inhabitants because the “enemy”.
Throughout a speech within the Indian parliament in New Delhi final week, Kashmiri parliamentarian Sheikh Abdul condemned the deaths of Mir and Din and demanded an unbiased probe into them.
“Our blood shouldn’t be low cost,” he stated. “We even have the suitable to stay.”
