Video shows Hizbul gunmen tonsuring ‘informer’ in Valley
A grim video surfaced in the Kashmir Valley on Friday, showing a group of alleged Hizbul Mujahideen gunmen assaulting two suspected police informers, giving them a rough haircut, and shoving one of the victim’s head into a bucket of water.
The dark and grainy sevenminute video starts with the Hizbul militant group’s name and insignia scrolled on it, and goes on to show a dark room in which a man in military camouflage clothing uses a pair of scissors to roughly trim the hair of a person squatting on the ground with folded hands.
A running ticker below it shows: “Breaking news: Asalamualaikum: ye wo gaddar hai jo police mai SPO barti hone ke liye mujahideen ki khabar Hindustani kutton ko detey hai.” (These are the traitors who join police to provide information about Mujahideen to Indian dogs.) The camera then pans to another man whose hair was given a crooked cut by then, and a couple of men thrash him with sticks.
The assaulters also shove one of their victim’s head into a bucket of water and beat him.
The clip, probably shot with a mobile phone, doesn’t have pictures in large parts. The language spoken by the men seems Kashmiri, but was incomprehensible because of the poor audio quality.
The video was tagged at Tral, the south Kashmir hometown of slain Hijbul militant commander Burhan Wani whose death last July triggered a long public unrest.
“I have not seen the video,” said Mohammad Zaid, police superintendent of Awantipora under whose jurisdiction Tral falls. HT could not independently confirm the identity of the victims and the authenticity of the video, shared on WhatsApp messaging groups run on VPN software to dodge the government’s latest ban on social media in Kashmir.
Friday’s assault clip follows a string of videos in April that purportedly showed human rights violations by security forces in Kashmir.
The government suspended high-speed internet and then blocked 22 social media websites and groups such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to stop the circulation of stirring videos in the Valley.