Thread by @FreeKashmirOrg

5 years ago, on this day, 8-year-old #Kashmiri Muslim girl was raped and murdered by Hindu extremists. A long thread:

On 17th January, in 2018, Muhammad Yusuf was at his home in Kathua, sitting perturbed and restless, when one of his neighbors came running towards him.
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He broke a news that'd traumatize any uncle in the world: they had found dead body of his eight-year-old niece, Asifa, laying in bushes in forest, a few hundred meters away. Muhammad Yusuf was not just her uncle, he had raised Asifa and adopted her when she was a toddler.

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Asifa had gone missing on 10th January. On that afternoon, Asifa had gone out to forest to bring home the horses. The horses did eventually return home but Asifa did not. According to a report by the BBC, two days later, on 12 January, the family filed a police complaint.

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But, according to her father, the police were not helpful. One of the police officers, in a mocking tone, told Asifa’s father that the 8-year-old must have “eloped” with a boy. What a sinister and evil remark!

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Five days later, on 17th January, body of Asifa was finally found. Asifa’s mother, Rafeeza, who rushed to forest to see her daughter, states “She'd (Asifa) been tortured. Her legs were broken…Her nails turned black and there were blue and red marks on her arm and fingers.”

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On 23rd January, then Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti, initiated an investigation into the case, led by crime branch unit of the state police. According to the investigation, it was revealed that the little Asifa had been confined in a local temple for...

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...all the days when she was missing and forcibly given sedatives that kept her unconscious. On 23rd January, the then Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti, initiated an investigation into the case, led by the crime branch unit of the state police.

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The investigation further revealed that Asifa was “raped for days, tortured and then finally murdered”. She was strangled to death and then her head was hit multiple times with a stone.

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The Hindu extremist Sanji Ram, a 60-year-old retired government officer, had orchestrated the crime along with police officers Surender Verma, Anand Dutta, Tilak Raj and Deepak Khajuria. Ram’s son, his nephew, and his friend, Parvesh, also participated in rape and murder.

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It was revealed that before little Asifa was strangled and her head hit twice with a stone “to make sure” she was dead, Deepak, a special police officer, expressed a sinister and vile demand. He sought to rape the eight-year-old before she was finally murdered.

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“As such”, the police investigation states, “once again the little girl was gang-raped” by Deepak and then by the nephew of Sanji Ram. Afterwards, they killed the little Asifa, who must have wondered, what did she do to deserve this brutality?

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While many Hindu nationalists initially sought to present the case as just another case of “sexual violence”, the investigation revealed that it was the religious bigotry harboured by perpetrators against the Muslim community of Bakarwals, that led to the whole event.

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They wanted to inflict collective pain upon entire community, and for this, they made Asifa their target. According to the police investigation, the goal was to use fear and dread to drive out the Muslim community, to expel them from the village using such ghastly tactics.

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A police officer, Anand Dutta, who was initially in charge of the investigation, took more than $6,000 as a bribe in order to put a lid on the crime. Dutta even washed the clothes that Asifa was wearing at the time of incident in order to erase any marks of blood or semen.

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The state of Hindu fanaticism in India can be gauged by the fact that the men who were involved in the rape and murder of Asifa found a huge number of extremist lawyers and ministers from India’s governing BJP marching in their support, demanding that they be set free.

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Hindu nationalist lawyers of went on to block the entrance to a local court to stop the police from submitting charges against the perpetrators of the crime. The lawyer pleading Asifa’s case received many death and rape threats.

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In June, 2019, three of the perpetrators were sentenced to imprisonment for life for the rape, torture and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl. 3 police officers were also found guilty of destroying evidence and sentenced to five years in prison.

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One of the accused was acquitted and one, due to juvenile status, was tried separately. The Hindu extremists went to so far as to not even allow Asifa to be buried in her village.

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The truth remains, however, that the perpetrators did succeed in their sinister goal. Many Muslim nomadic families did leave the village after the incident, fearing for the safety and security of their daughters.

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If affairs are left to such Hindu extremists, perhaps the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

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