50 per cent of human rights complaints from J&K: RTI

Jammu and Kashmir accounted for 49.5 per cent of the human rights violation complaints against the armed forces between 2012 and 2016, revealed an RTI reply. Meanwhile, the state’s share in the monetary relief recommended was a mere three per cent, it said.

A total of 186 complaints were received between 2012 and January 2016 from seven states, said the Ministry of Home Affairs while replying to an Right to Information application.

The other six states were Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

The RTI reply was received by Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in April this year from the CPIO of the ministry.

According to the reply, by January 2016 more than twothirds of these complaints (127) are said to have been disposed of. The data does not indicate whether these complaints were found to be true or false.

Also, more than 57 per cent of the complaints from Assam are shown as pending.

“J&K accounted for 49.5 per cent of the human rights complaints received against the armed forces during this period (2012 to January 2016),” the reply said.

“A little more than 31 per cent of the complaints were received from the people in Assam. Manipur accounted for a little more than 11 per cent of the total number of complaints. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura accounted for less than 10 complaints each. Only one complaint was received from Nagaland during this period,” according to the reply.

“About 40 per cent of the complaints are clubbed under the category ‘defence forces’ without any detailing as to what kinds of complaints they are,” according to the ministry reply.

“When the distinct categories of ‘death in army encounter’ and ‘death in army firing’ are added, the proportion of complaints received against the defence forces goes up to more than 61 per cent of the total number of complaints received against all armed forces operating in the seven states,” Nayak said.

The RTI response also says ten of these complaints relate to the crime of abduction and rape – received from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura.

The data also shows that monetary relief to the tune of Rs 6.47 crore was recommended in 117 cases.