A group of women from Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday condemned the “horrifying politicisation and communalisation” of an eight-year-old girl’s rape and murder in Jammu’s Kathua district. In a statement, the women alleged that “vested interests” were “trying to sabotage investigations”.
Not just fringe groups, “two senior sitting ministers” from the ruling alliance of the People’s Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party are also politicising the crime, the group claimed. “We feel there is a deliberate attempt to hush up the case by building up a communal narrative around the heinous crime and its investigations,” the women said.
Fourteen women signed the statement, which is meant to lead up to an online signature campaign demanding justice for the child. Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of Kashmir Times, Shehla Rashid Shora, former vice president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union, and author Nitasha Kaul are among the activists, academics, journalists and advocates who signed the statement.
On January 17, the eight-year-old girl’s body was found in Rassana village in Kathua district’s Hiranagar area, a week after she went missing. “The sequence of events shows that there has been a deliberate attempt by a section from within the government to thwart the process of investigations in the case, right from the time of her disappearance,” the women alleged.
The statement pointed to reports that said the police had been reluctant to record a missing person’s case, had not followed necessary procedure, including questioning witnesses and collecting evidence, and had harassed the child’s family. The case, it noted, had shifted from one special investigating team to a second and then to the Crime Branch, but the investigation were not making headway.
The child was Muslim. All three accused – two special police officers and a boy – are Hindu. After they were arrested, a newly formed organisation called the Hindu Ekta Manch had held a rally to protest against it. Local leaders of the BJP and the Congress had also attended the rally on February 14, demanding that the case be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. According to the statement, any attempt to transfer the case to another agency would hamper the inquiry further.
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