Kashmir: Family points finger at the Army for ‘suspicious’ death of Pulwama teen

Yawar Bhat’s family allege he was ‘beaten up’ by the Army and committed suicide to avoid ‘further torture’.

WrittenBy:Rayan Naqash
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Yawar Bhat’s family describe him as “sensitive”. It is over a fortnight since the 15-year-old Class 10 student filled out the forms for the upcoming State Board of School Education exams, even as classwork remains suspended across Kashmir since early August. 

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It is also eight days since Yawar died on September 19 under mysterious circumstances. Some of his family members claim he committed suicide to avoid “torture” by the Army after being “beaten up” and summoned to an Army camp again — a run-in that led to his eventual death. Others point out there were no injuries on the boy’s body. 

Here’s what happened.

Yawar was the youngest of seven children. He had started work as a mechanic’s apprentice to supplement the family’s income from a modest orchard in their village of Chandigam in Pulwama district of southern Kashmir.

According to his family, Yawar managed to stay out of trouble from security forces and stone-throwers alike — until September 17. 

That morning, Yawar went to the mechanic’s workshop in a nearby village to fetch some tools to carry out repair work in Chandigam. The trip would have taken him 15 minutes at best, but he came home over an hour later.

Yawar’s family says he was acting “strange” that day — refusing to eat and speaking in monosyllables. They claim there was a noticeable change in his gait and behaviour. “He was not walking with his head up, as if he was being pulled down by some weight,” said his brother, Dawood Bhat. “He wasn’t talking properly either.”

His father Hamid Bhat says his son refused to eat. “He sat with his hands behind his head,” he recalls. “When he wasn’t looking from one side to the other, he was deep in thought. He was restless.” The only times Yawar spoke were to state and restate his fear of the Army.

Later that day, Yawar confided in one of his sisters. He alleged he had been stopped by Armymen on his way back home. They seized his identity card and he was “beaten up” at the Army camp in the nearby village of Tahab. Yawar told her he had been summoned to the camp the following morning to collect his identity card.

In the evening, Yawar vomited. The sister he had confided in saw him writhing on the floor. Dawood told Newslaundry his sister suspected that Yawar had consumed poison, an attempt to commit suicide to escape further torture by the Army. This is what the rest of his family thinks too, considering Yawar had said he had been told to return to the Army camp in the morning. According to them, many others in the district had recently been “tortured” in this camp.

No clarity on the cause of death

Yawar was taken to the Pulwama district hospital, where the family told medical staff that he’d consumed poison. Doctors flushed out his stomach but Hamid said they were “doubtful”. “They told us there was no smell,” Hamid explains.

Regardless, Yawar was referred to the multispecialty Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar. Yawar was first admitted to the emergency ward and then to a general ward to be treated for poisoning. 

It is here that the family’s account of the incident diffuses.

Hamid claims that the doctors initially said Yawar was stable and his tests were normal. Yawar had water to drink but did not eat the first day at the hospital. “He was still not passing urine so we wanted to get more tests done,” says Hamid. “One of the doctors told us that his kidneys had been damaged.”

Hamid adds that another doctor, called in for a second opinion, pointed out that this was not a case of poisoning as “there were no signs of it 72 hours later”. However, Hamid also said the boy’s body bore no marks of injuries suggesting torture.

On September 19, Yawar’s condition worsened. Hamid says the family was offered no explanation by the doctors but Yawar was admitted to an intensive care unit where he was put on life-support machines. Yawar was conscious at this point. “He was still speaking and was worried whether doctors would operate on him,” his father says.

According to the family, soon after Yawar was admitted to the ICU, a doctor told Hamid he should “speak any last words” to his son before he “passed away”. Hamid says: “I told him [Yawar] to tell me what happened to him, otherwise this thought will pull me down all my life. But he didn’t respond. He just asked for forgiveness for the last time.”

After this brief conversation, Hamid says, doctors asked him to leave the room, preventing him from recording a video message from Yawar for the family back home. “When we were allowed back inside, he was taken off the machines and his eyes were taped shut,” he says. “We didn’t understand; he was speaking and had even gotten on the bed himself.”

Hamid claims there was a commotion between the doctors over who would issue the death certificate. On September 23, the family says it has still not received Yawar’s death certificate.

Police case

Doctors at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital told Newslaundry the Bhat family had not been “forthcoming” in Yawar’s case, and had “given no history for the boy”. As such, the doctors treated him based on the referral from the district hospital in Pulwama that mentioned rat poisoning.

One of the doctors said there were “no signs of poisoning on the first day” but when Yawar’s toxicology report came in a day later, “all indicators of rodenticide poisoning were high and in such cases, there is usually liver damage or kidneys failing”. 

The Pulwama police could not be reached for a statement on the incident. However, media reports have quoted the district’s superintendent of police, Chandan Kohli, as saying that the police were investigating the boy’s “suspicious” death that was likely caused by poisoning. 

The doctors told Newslaundry they were not allowed to speak to the press and refused to divulge any more information. The hospital’s medical superintendent also refused to speak to the press, saying Yawar’s death was under police investigation.

The family says they didn’t file a complaint with the police. They also claim no postmortem was done on Yawar before his burial.

‘There is oppression in Kashmir’

Down the lane from the Bhat residence is the house of a bedridden young man who was allegedly tortured at the same Army camp in Tahab village. Feroze Ahmad, in his early 20s, alleges that he was tied to a chair and beaten up by five soldiers.

Feroze says he was returning home from a nearby village when he found Army soldiers at the gate of his house. “They took away my phone and identity card,” he says. “They asked me to come the next morning but when I went there, they asked me to come again the next day. They did that four times.”

On the fifth day, Feroze says, he was taken inside the camp and tortured. 

His grandfather reaches for his wallet and shows Newslaundry a finger-sized pin they allege was inserted into Feroze’s lips. His face still shows signs of injuries, some of which have faded. “One of them hit me in the eye with his elbow,” Feroze says, pointing to his blackened and swollen eye.

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The pin allegedly inserted into Feroze’s lips.

A young man in Tahab claims the Army returned seized identity cards belonging to various others without any more trouble when the news of Yawar’s death spread in the area. “They did that only because this boy died,” he says, on condition of anonymity.

Since the unrest of 2016 — during which a young lecturer was beaten to death by Army soldiers — there have been several instances of the security forces, largely consisting of Armymen, ransacking entire neighbourhoods, beating up residents, and illegally detaining young men across South Kashmir. The Army has generally denied involvement in such incidents in the past.

Newslaundry has sought the Army’s response via email to the allegations of abuse levelled against its soldiers and their role in the events surrounding Yawar’s death. The email was sent on September 24. This story will be updated if they respond.

The day of his alleged encounter with the soldiers, Hamid says, pushed Yawar into thinking death was better than the abuse waiting he thought he’d get at the Army camp. “He kept saying that it was better to die than to go to the Army camp,” says Hamid, adding that Yawar kept repeating: “There is oppression on Kashmiri youth. I would rather die.”

It’s also one of the last things Yawar said before he died. Hamid quotes Yawar as saying: “I am sacrificing my life for Kashmir.”

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