Budgam, September 27:
Twelve-year-old Sameen (name changed) was home, spending a weekly holiday on the first Sunday of September.
Her father, Ashraf Bhat (name changed) had left home early in the morning to earn a few hundred bucks for his family of 10 – his aged mother, wife and seven children including five daughters. Sameen is the youngest of all sisters.
It was at around 4 pm that Sameen yelled, looking for the whereabouts of her mother, who was not home.
One of her sisters told her that their mother had gone to a field and was grazing a cow near a hillock, two km from their house in central Kashmir’s Budgam district.
In a hurry, Sameen decided to see her mother barely knowing she would fall prey to a “beast”.
As she ventured out her house, her friend, of almost similar age, joined her in the trek to the place where Sameen’s mother was grazing the cow.
“When the two girls reached near the place, her mother had probably left from there,” says Ashraf as he puffs a hookah at a relative’s house.
On the evening of September’s first Sunday, Ashraf returned home from the day’s work as did his wife after grazing the cow.
As usual, Ashraf was surrounded by his children but Sameen was not around.
“She was kneeling on the floor in another room,” said 47-year-old Ashraf.
He asked her wife the reason behind Sameen’s unusual state.
“She might be suffering from fever,” she replied.
A child looking feverish seems normal.
When the father called her little daughter, Ashraf said, she could not utter anything and lowered her gaze.
“It was too late, and we decided to take her to the doctor the next morning,” he said.
The minor girl, a 6th standard student at a local government school, perhaps could not make sense what happened to her on the fateful day.
But she was aware that something bad had happened.
She could speak about the painful incident the next day when she came to terms.
On September 3, as Ashraf left for work, as usual, his daughter took the responsibility to take her younger sister to a local hospital.
On the way to the hospital, Sameen narrated to her sister the chilling incident that she had become victim of.
At the hospital, the doctor suggested the sisters to visit the police station instead.
They went back home and mustered courage to speak to the parents about the abuse that Sameen had suffered a day before.
What had happened to the minor girl shook the family, neighbours and relatives.
Sameen was allegedly sexually abused by a 28-year-old man, who lives in her neighbourhood.
“She was not suffering from fever but from depression. The incident has disoriented my daughter,” Ashraf says.
On that fateful Sunday, at the vegetation field where Sameen was searching for her mother, the accused Javid Ahmad Dar accompanied by another boy came in collision with Sameen and her friend.
Dar forcibly held Sameen in the vegetation field and let the boy, who accompanied him go, Ashraf quoted Sameen’s friend as saying.
“Beyond this, it became almost impossible for him to narrate further,” he said. “It is a monstrous act. How can he do that to my daughter?”
Next day, Ashraf went to a local police post and registered a complaint against the accused Dar.
Subsequently, based on the complaint, a case FIR No 163/2018 was registered at Police Station Khan Sahab in Budgam, and the investigation into the is on under section 377 (unnatural offence).
The 15-day police remand of the accused Dar ended on September 18 and he has been put under judicial remand for further 15 days, a Police officer said.
“The accused attempted to rape the victim,” said a Police officer, privy to the case.
He said the victim’s statement has been already recorded under section 164 of the CrPC.
Although, there has been no enmity between Ashraf’s and Dar’s family in the past, Ashraf says, “The offence is not forgivable. Justice must be delivered so that no other child becomes a victim of such crime.”
He said the incident had left a deep scar on the family and the child.
“Now, she doesn’t respond the way she used to respond before the incident. The incident has traumatised her. We are devastated,” Ashraf said.
Sameen is not a lone victim of sexual abuse in Kashmir.
On September 2, a nine-year-old girl was recovered, exactly after 10 days in a decomposed state from underneath the chopped-pine branches at Trikanjan, Boniyar in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
The victim had undergone a horrendous assault at the hands of her stepmother Fahmeeda, stepbrother Sahil and his three friends.
The culprits committed the worst form of brutality that Kashmir has seen by gang raping the victim, murdering her with an axe and lastly sprinkling sulphuric acid on her.
All the accused have been arrested.
It was on August 23, a day after Eid-ul-Adha, that the minor girl accompanied her stepmother, who mostly takes the animals for grazing in nearby forests.
On the fateful day, the minor girl fell victim to the ill conspiracy of her stepmother, who was armed with a sharp-edged knife.
According to Police, Sahil along with his two friends Kaiser Ahmad, 19, and Aadil Ahmad,14, of Trikanjan and Naseer Ahmad Khan, 28, of Lari, Trikanjan also reached the spot and raped the minor girl, while Fahmeeda watched the crime episode and also strangulated the victim.
Kaiser was the first to rape the girl. Later, Sahil and his friends took turns to rape the minor girl again.
Thereafter, Fahmeeda strangulated her stepdaughter and Sahil hit her head with an axe, killing her on the spot.
The victim’s father has two wives – Fahmeeda, a local, and Khushboo, a non-local from Jharkhand.
The victim was the daughter of Kushboo, who would mostly stay at home and do household chores, while Fahmeeda would mostly graze goats in the nearby forests.
Police said Fahmeeda had been nourishing a long-standing grudge against Khushboo and her children as she had a perception that her husband was more inclined and affectionate toward Khushboo and the children born of her than her (Fahmeeda) and her children.
“The acrimonious atmosphere, primarily for the reason of second marriage of Mushtaq had been building up in the family over a period of time. Hence, Fahmeeda hatched a conspiracy to eliminate her stepdaughter,” Police said.
On May 28 this year, a minor girl (name withheld) of Budgam district was allegedly raped by a 22-year-old man, Mohammad Maqbool Rather of Yarikhan village Khan Sahab.
The victim’s father alleged in a complaint to Police that the accused had raped his daughter.
Police had taken cognizance of the case and victim’s medical examination also confirmed the rape of the victim.
In January, another minor girl (name withheld) had gone to the house of a neighbour, Irshad Ahmad Shah where her sister was playing with one of his daughters.
The accused Shah allegedly sexually assaulted the minor girl in a room and threatened to kill her if she revealed anything to her parents.
However, the victim, later on, revealed the incident before her parents.
Subsequently, the accused was arrested by police and charged under relevant sections of law.
Sexual abuse bore by children like Sameen and other victims rarely trigger any outrage.
According to National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, 222 cases of crime against children were registered in Jammu and Kashmir in 2016.
As per NCRB, the number of cases of crime against children had increased to 308 in 2015 from 211 such cases in 2014.
Of the 222 cases registered in 2016, five were of murder, two cases were of attempt to commit murder, 167 cases of kidnapping and abduction and five cases of unnatural offence.
A total of 21 cases of child rape, two cases of sexual assault of children and sexual harassment were registered in the State in 2016.
Mudasir Hassan, a clinical psychologist at Government Medical College (GMC), Srinagar said not only females but males as well faced child sexual abuse in Kashmir.
He said most victims did not speak about the abuse whether there an involvement of a relative or an outsider.
“We use proper psychological techniques – child emotionality understanding, Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), catharsis and play therapy – to understand the stress among the victims,” he said.
Hassan said when the victim is able to speak about the abuse, the treatment begins to help the victim overcome the psychological trauma.
The clinical psychologist, who attends Out-Patient Department (OPD) twice a week at a Srinagar hospital said he alone receives a case of child sexual abuse almost every week.
He says once he came across a case in which a father had raped his minor daughter.
“Such victims should open up against the abuse. It will help other victims speak about the menace,” he said.
In April this year, following a massive outrage over the gang rape and murder of a minor nomad girl in Kathua, the State cabinet approved two ordinances – Jammu and Kashmir Criminal Law Ordinance, 2018, and Jammu and Kashmir Protection of Children from Sexual Violence Ordinance, 2018 – seeking to amend the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) and Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act. These ordinances provide for life term or death for rape of a girl up to 12 years of age.
Khalid Mehraj, a sociologist from north Kashmir says inappropriate use of media by people and improper parenting were reasons behind sexual violence against children.
He admitted that content available on the internet was affecting the psychology of people.
Khalid said the sexual violence against children was due to the impact of media as there was “no restriction” on what people see on the internet or any another medium like television.
“Some TV serials also provoke people toward sexual violence,” Mehraj said.
He said there was a downward trend in moral teaching both at the family and school level and there was a dire need to take up moral education of children.
“Children don’t even get moral education at family level and are admitted in crèches when they aren’t even able to speak,” he said.
Mehraj said lack of religious teachings and the end of parental control over their children were other reasons.
“The religious knowledge that children once use to get at their homes has also come down,” he said.
Mehraj said there were children, who keep mobile phones with knowledge of their parents and parents do not bother to question their children about it.
“Parental control has come to an end. People now don’t find time to care for their children. This (lack of parental control) is more dangerous than media factor,” he said.
Mehraj said the lack of parental control also creates a gap between parents and children.
“And if a child faces any harassment, then he or she finds it difficult to reveal about it before his parents. Thus, children become a victim,” he said.
