In Anantnag, 50 km from Srinagar on March 25. The police killed five apparently innocent civilians in Pathribal village, burnt their bodies and buried them. It claimed that these were militants responsible for the Sikh massacre of March 20 at Chattisinghpora. The local villagers, however, insisted that this was a fake encounter.

When the bodies were exhumed, their relatives directly confirmed the identity of three. Two others were identified on the basis of the clothes found in their graves. All five had gone missing on the intervening night of March 23 and 24 from four different villages in Anantnag. When the indignant yillagers took out a procession against these extra-judicial killings, the police opened fire and seven of them were killed.

Although Farooq Abdullah reacted promptly and ordered judicial inquiries into the incidents, what was the reaction in the rest of India? Except from the media, there was no reaction. There was no sense of. shame, no indignation. Our political parties did not consider the Anantnag incidents important enough to address.

However, there are compelling reasons for the Indian polity not to fail the Kashmiris - especially at a juncture when the political space for negotiations with the Kashmiri opposition is opening up.

.. The context within which Kashmir is viewed today has changed dramatically. Internationally, the perception of the Indian State and its ability to handle crises has undergone a radical transformation ...

... Clinton's central message on Kashmir was that the US cannot be put under pressure to intervene in the Kashmir dispute (i.e, no more Kargils), that it does not approve of violence (stop cross-border terrorism) and that no major territorial rearrangements are possible using force (respect the LoC).

Simultaneously, Clinton emphasised that India cannot hope to clobber the Kashmiri opposition into submission and that it must open channels of communication to work out a political arrangement with them. Now the British Foreign Secretary has repeated the same message about dialogue and restraint. This reinforces values that democratic elements in India subscribe to and which can be held up as a mirror to the state. As for the Kashmiri opposition, there should be no cause for disappointment for them either. The world today is urging India to work out a political arrangement in Jammu and Kashmir. Such an arrangement can be worked out only with them.

These developments have the potential of expanding the political space in Kashmir. Perhaps the release of three of the 15 senior Hurriyat leaders from jail (where they should not have been in the first place) is a recognition of this fact by the Indian Government - as is the offer of a dialogue with them ... The rest of the Hurriyat leadership in jail should also be released. This would enable the Hurriyat to absorb the changing international and domestic reality by facilitating wide ranging consultations between themselves, with their cadre and the Kashmiri people ...

It is not only the Kashmiri leaders who have to make a course correction but also the Indian polity. It bas responsibility towards the Kashmiris. And this can only he discharged by partaking in their sorrows, viewing their humiliation as the humiliation of the rest of India and by protesting strongly against injustices done to the innocent.

That is why the lack of reaction of the Indian polity to the 'fake' encounter in Anantnag is disheartening. It shows that India's conscience is not touched by the plight of the people of Kashmir.

The onus is on India to ensure that the innocents in J&K are insulated from those engaged in violence ... rather than concentrating on match-fixing by getting this or that pliable leader installed as the Chief Minister of the state ...(Source: The Hindustan Times, 20 April, 2000)