More than a month after five persons including a woman were killed in north Kashmir's Kupwara district after clashes triggered by allegations of molestation of a minor girl by a soldier, the girl at the center of controversy on Monday said that she was humiliated in police custody and forced to record a statement. She said she was subjected to an assault by an army man at a public toilet in Handwara on April 12 and after she ran out, a crowd gathered but she was overpowered by a policeman who dragged her to police station.
The girl flanked by her parents addressed a Press conference here at the office of Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), a rights group that provided her legal aid and sought court directions to withdraw her police cover.
The girl's video had gone viral on the next day of the incident wherein she had said that there was no soldier inside the washroom but it were some local boys who tried to drag her into controversy.
Two youngsters were killed in firing by security forces shortly after protests were held in the town. A woman also died at a distance when she was hit by a stray bullet. Two more youngsters were killed in subsequent firing in next two days in the vicinity over protests, which spread almost every part of Kashmir Valley.
"I recognized the policeman who dragged me to the Handwara police station. This was against my will as I asked him to allow me to go to my house. He verbally abused me while being taken to police station," the veiled girl said in her first appearance after the incident.
She said police searched her bag to know her name. "The Munshi of police station took away my phones and disallowed me to call my parents," she said.
She said Superintendent of Police recorded her statement with a promise that it would not be made public. "Because of the pressure, and in light of being threatened by the policemen on what to say, I repeated my statement on video without putting any blame on the army and without mentioning what the army man had done to me outside the public toilet," she said. The Handwara schoolgirl also accused the Chairperson of State Women's Commission Nayeema Mehjoor of 'siding with the police'.
Meanwhile, the girl has approached the police station Handwara to register a case against army in sexual assault case. She has also asked the police to register a case against a police official for recording her statement in custody and circulating it without hiding her identity.