The police took just one hour to demolish it
On May 8, 2020, a hazard occurred in the village of Budgam, Indian Occupied Kashmir. This place witnessed the horrific event when Indian security forces thrashed and looted each one of the houses of this village and ended the cruelty by burning them. Most of the houses were damaged with broken windows and doors; courtyards were filled with the wreckage of furniture, washbasins, toilet commodes. Staircases too were broken while food grain, spices, salt and wheat flour are strewn all around the floor. The vegetable gardens lay plundered; the vegetables have been destroyed and the green mound lay rotting in the courtyards of many houses.
Fayaz Ahmed, one of the villagers, was broken down by the fact that his house had been toppled down by the Indian brutal authorities. As stated by him, he couldn't even bear looking at his house. Nobody could imagine his pain unless he himself accumulated money for almost ten years to build a house, which got destroyed in front of his eyes. “The police took just one hour to demolish it,” says Fayaz pointing to the badly damaged one-story structure. His wife and two children try to console him.
Amidst the night of May 8, Indian security forces barged into Fayaz’s house and beat him up with batons and yanked his wife by the hair and dragged her out. “Soon, they began to vandalize everything inside. They threw kitchen utensils out, broke two doors and destroyed everything,” says Mehmooda, Fayaz’s wife. She called it a “night of mayhem for the village”.
Throughout the road, dozens of damaged trucks, cars, and bikes could be seen. Shards of the glass of broken window panes and vehicles lay spattered on the road. All the shops that flanked the road were shut while many of them partially or fully damaged. Mounds of rice, wheat flour, soap bars, a half-burnt weighing balance, all lay piled up in a dirty lane near a shop.
Another villager, Firdous Ahmed, whose shop was ransacked by the police, said, “The police tore apart shutters of my shop with iron rods and pillaged it. They stole some of the cash. I don’t know how to rebuild it. I am left with no money.”
Jabar was in his house when he heard a commotion outside. He came out and saw a dozen policemen coming advancing towards his house. Before he could react, he recalls a policeman hit him on his arm with his baton. “Then, they went inside my home and beat my wife. One man slapped her on the face. She came out crying,” says Jabar. “This is Zulm, just that, Zulm”, he blurts out in a rage.
The villagers claim that the police also sprayed ‘some powder’ that made many people unconscious. Zareena Begum, 47, claims that she was beaten up by the policemen. She showed her legs with scars that were still fresh. She did not dare go to the hospital fearing that she could be arrested.” “I was beaten up after being dragged inside the bathroom. I was just trying to stop the policemen from vandalizing my home,” says Begum.
Related Reports
