Bobins Abraham
Ever since the security clampdown and communication blackout in Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370 in early August, various rights groups and international media houses had claimed that there were mass detentions in the state including minors.
However, the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Central Government had vehemently denied all such reports calling them fake news and propaganda.
But now the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has told the Supreme Court that 144 children, including a nine-year-old, were detained by the police since August 5.
But all those arrested and lodged in police stations were released on the same day, police told the Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s four-member Juvenile Justice Committee, which had been asked by the Supreme Court to look into allegations of child detentions.
The detention of children spans the whole of the Kashmir valley, from Sopore in the north to the southern district of Shopian, with a large number from the region’s main city of Srinagar, according to the justice committee’s report.
Some children are listed as having been taken under preventive detention, while others have been held for various criminal offences, including disturbing public tranquillity.
Among them is nine-year-old Sahil Ahmad Sheikh from Srinagar’s Batamaloo area, which has seen regular clashes between locals and security forces, who was detained on Aug. 8 and released on the same date, according to police data provided in the report.
Reuters, quoting the report stated that as of September 25, only two children, both aged 17 years, were lodged in juvenile homes.
In a letter to the committee that was included in the report, Kashmir’s police chief said that the charges of illegal child detentions had no merit, but children found to be in violation of the law were being “strictly dealt” with.
“The state machinery has been constantly upholding the rule of law and not a single juvenile in conflict with the law has been illegally detained,” police said.
Children had been lured into violent acts by “being used as shield by some vested interests,” police said, and some were involved in stone-pelting, rioting and causing damage to public and private property, as per their investigation.
The SC had sought the report while hearing a petition by child rights activist Enakshi Ganguly and Santha Sinha alleging that children were being illegally detained in Jammu and Kashmir.
Agencies
