Rashid Paul
SRINAGAR: A teenage boy in Kashmir, on bail over stone pelting charges, has appealed to court to save him from the police who were allegedly pressurizing him to ‘spy’ for them.
Danish Farooq spent 16 days in police custody last November and was released after the Amnesty International raised concern over his detention as a minor.
The 17-year-old has now filed a petition with the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Srinagar seeking that he be taken into judicial custody.
He says the police was forcing him “to pass on information about other boys who throw stones during protests.”
The young boy says the police call him “more often than required to the Kralkhud and Shaheedgunj police stations.”
According to him, he was also forced to accompany policemen during night raids on stone throwing suspects. “They cover my face with a mask, only my eyes can be seen, and ask me to identify boys who throw stones at them.”
After one such raid in April, he says, the police picked up a few boys. Perhaps guilty, he told the court that he preferred being in custody than working for the police which “I dislike the most”.
Judicial custody would mean that the boy will be sent to jail, but he will technically remain under a magistrate’s supervision and the police cannot interrogate him. The police, in order to get access to him, will have to seek permission of the magistrate.
‘Pushed to the Wall’
With the armed violence waning, stone throwing has become a more chosen form of protest in Kashmir. The shift gained momentum in 2008, when a popular anti-India uprising erupted against transfer of land to a Hindu shrine management.
The police on its part acts tough against the youth to prevent such protests. Earlier this year, when fresh violence erupted over the hanging of Afzal Guru, the police admitted to having arrested a huge number of “stone pelters”.
Many of them were released later. But observers say the police is using different tactics to swoop down heavily on such youth to crush any future protests.
The teenage boy’s lawyer, Babar Qadri says he knows many more like his client who were hounded by police to be part of their ‘spying network’.
He warns “tackling the situation through this diabolic methodology will lead to another unmanageable one”.
“Some of the boys have succumbed while many have taken to drugs,” he says.
‘Punished Enough’
But the police deny that they forced Danish to work for them.
DIG, Central Kashmir, Syed Afadul Mujtaba says the young boy was a stone pelter and that he could not be trusted.
“He may be trying to malign people (police) so that the law enforcement agency is presented in the worst possible manner. How can you rely on a person who has been a stone pelter,” Mujtaba told a local daily.
Danish, on trial, says he has no issues with the court case against him. The only thing that worries him is that he may end up as a police informer.
His father, Farooq Ahmed says forcing his son to work as a spy was unjustified.
“You continue to punish him for a crime, that too which was never established?”
