Hriday Nath Wanchoo

Hriday Nath Wanchoo was a Kashmiri communist trade-unionist, who is remembered for ensuring the socioeconomic upliftment of sanitation workers and documenting abuse of human rights in Kashmir.[1][2]

Career and politics

Wanchoo was employed as the Khilafarzi officer in Srinagar municipality.[2] Wanchoo documented extrajudicial murders, rapes, and illegal detentions by millitant forces often filing petitions for legal recourse. He was a pioneer that fought for Kashmiri muslims [3]

Death

Wanchoo was assassinated by "unidentified gunmen" on 5 December 1992.These unidentified men came asking him to help them out in some legal case for child of a sweeper. He went with them and was assasinated at Balgarden, karan nagar by the same gunmen.[4] Local activists accused the government of having released two militants in exchange for an extra-judicial execution, one of whom was later killed in an "encounter"; Human Rights Watch noted Wanchoo's murder to fit into the state's brutal suppression of conversations on human rights.[4] Days before his death, Wanchoo had confessed in private, about threats to his life from militant groups.

However, the Central Bureau of Investigation, upon probing the murder, laid the blame on a militant group called "Jamait-ul-Mujahidin". Three of its members — Mohammad Shafi Khan (aka Shafi Shariati), a faculty member of the University of Kashmir specialising in Persian; Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a budding separatist; Ghulam Qadir Bhat — went to trial, all of whom had confessed to their crimes.[5] Whereas the trial court acquitted all of them citing procedural deficiencies in obtaining confessional statements and the absence of any other corroborative evidence, the Supreme Court of India overturned the judgement and sentenced all of them to life imprisonment.[5]

The judgement remains disputed; Scholars Seema Kaji and Sumantra Bose suspect the Indian state to have had a role in the murder.[6][7]

References
  1. "Opinion | In India, Misery and Corruption Fuel Violence; Kashmiri Activist Dead". The New York Times. 1992-12-31. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  2. WANCHOO, DR AMIT. "Hridai: A heart that understood human suffering". Greater Kashmir. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  3. Varadarajan, Patanjali M. A Report on Torture, Extra-judicial Executions, Rape, Arbitrary Arrests, Disappearances and other Violations of Basic Human Rights by the Indian Security Forces in Indian-administered Kashmir. (Undertaken in co-operation with Federation Internationale des Droits de L'Homme)
  4. "Behind the Kashmir Conflict - Threats against Human Rights Defenders (Human Rights Watch Report, July 1999)". www.hrw.org. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  5. Central Bureau Of Investigation v. Ashiq Hussain Faktoo & Ors (Supreme Court of India 30 January 2003).Text
  6. Bose, Sumantra (2009-07-01). Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Harvard University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-674-02855-5.
  7. "Kashmir, Gender and Militarization in - Oxford Islamic Studies Online". www.oxfordislamicstudies.com. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
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