Handwara ‘victim’ traced to Kupwara

The 16-year-old Kashmiri girl whose alleged molestation pushed the Valley into increasing unrest and escalating violence, leaving five persons dead and scores injured past week, has been traced to her maternal uncle’s home in Zalchaldara, a remote area of frontier Kupwara district, by a legal team.

The girl had on April 13, a day after Handwara witnessed clashes over her alleged molestation, said in a video that it were actually two local youth who harassed her and that there was no Army soldier present in the public lavatory where the supposed incident had taken place. She reiterated it in a statement recorded before a judicial magistrate in Handwara on Saturday. The video released by the Army had apparently been recorded in a police station on April 12 itself. The girl did not return home and next day her father Muhammad Akbar Ganai and aunt Zeba Begum were called to the police station where they were also reportedly detained. The police had said that they have been taken into “protective custody” by it. Media was denied access to them and even allowed to enter Handwara.

A legal team of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, appointed as legal counsels by the family of the girl, said it rushed to Handwara after being informed about the release of the girl and others on Sunday evening. However, it was told by her mother Taja Begum that the girl and her father have been relocated by the police to the girl’s maternal uncle’s home at Zachaldara and that the girl and her uncle were stopped by the police on their way to Handwara where they were to meet the team at the sub-district hospital and sent back by the police.