LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine): An application was filed by a law firm based in London, on Tuesday, with British police demanding the arrest of India’s army chief and a senior government official of India for their alleged complicity in war crimes in the disputed Kashmir region.
The law firm Stoke White said it has filed comprehensive evidence to the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Unit detailing how Indian forces led by Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravane and Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah tortured, kidnapped, and killed civilians, journalists, and activists.
Almost 2,000 testimonies collected between the years 2020 and 2021 by the law firm formed the basis of the report. Eight senior Indian military officials, who have not been named, have been accused of being directly involved in war crimes and torture in Kashmir.
“There is strong reason to believe that Indian authorities are conducting war crimes and other violence against civilians in Jammu and Kashmir,” according to the report, referring to the areas in the Himalayas.
The firm made the request under the principle of “Universal Jurisdiction”. This principle allows countries to pursue people who are accused of committing crimes against humanity anywhere in any part of the world.
The London-based international law practise claims that its appeal is the first ever legal action initiated overseas against authorities of India in relation to suspected war crimes in the northern state of Kashmir.
Hakan Camuz, Stoke White’s the director of international law, said he believed the carefully compiled report would persuade the police in Britain to begin an inquiry and eventually arrest the officials when they arrived in the UK. Some Indian authorities have financial and other ties to Britain.
Camuz stated, on the basis of the facts presented, the firm was asking the government of UK to do its job, probe and make arrests for what was done. The intention is to hold them responsible for their actions.Â
The police application was filed on behalf of the family of Zia Mustafa, a detained insurgent who Camuz claimed was killed by Indian officials in an extrajudicial assassination in 2021 and human rights activist Muhammad Ahsan Untoo, the man who is believed was tortured before his detention the previous week.Â
Kashmir is divided in two between India and Pakistan and both countries claim it entirely. The muslims of Kashmir back the rebels who seek to bring together the region, under either Pakistani rule or be declared an independent nation entirely. Thousands of rebels, government soldiers and civilians, have allegedly been killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the last two decades.
The Indian military is accused of abusing and arresting anyone who disagrees with New Delhi’s rule.
In 2018, the Human Rights chief of the UN urged for an independent international investigation into accusations of violations of human rights in Kashmir, claiming chronic amnesty for security forces atrocities.
The Indian government has rejected the alleged violations of human rights, claiming that such charges are a propaganda of the separatists intended to vilify Indian forces in the area.
According to the legal firm’s analysis, the abuse has gotten worse during the Covid outbreak.
Its study also detailed the arrest last year by India’s counterterrorism police of Khurram Parvez, the region’s most notable rights activist.
42 years old Parvez worked for the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, which has published numerous reports on the use of brutality and torture by Indian troops.
Journalist Sajad Gul had been arrested earlier this month after he posted a video of relatives and family members, denouncing the assassination of a rebels’ commander, according to other testimonies in the report.
The human rights attorneys have been increasingly turned to by the people who have been unable to report crimes in their countries or with the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The attorneys have used “universal jurisdiction”, seeking justice for such people.
A former secret police commander of Syria had been found guilty for committing crimes against humanity by a German court last week, under the same principle for overseeing the abusive and ill-treatment of thousands of captives at a jail located near Damascus, about a decade ago.
Camuz expressed the expectation that the appeal to British police for arresting Indian officials would be the first step in pursuing other legal steps aimed at Kashmir.
“We are sure this is not going to be the last one, there will probably be many more applications,” he said.
