Former Kashmir torture chamber turns venue for peace talks

“By your choice of venue, you have disgraced us,” said Yasin*, referring to the Hari Singh guesthouse where the Central government’s interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma held his first round of talks beginning November 6. In the 1990s, the guesthouse was an infamous torture centre.  After a brief tenure as the Chief Minister’s residence in 2007, Hari Niwas has been the state government’s guesthouse for visiting dignitaries.

Though Hari Niwas is the government guesthouse, it brings up bitter memories for many Kashmiris, including Yasin, and underlines the adversarial tone the Centre has taken by holding peace talks in the torture centre. “You may paint the walls, grow flowers, bring an interlocutor to hold peace talks there but Hari Niwas will never stop being the hell-hole it was for me and hundreds of other Kashmiris,” Yasin said.

In the autumn of 1994, Yasin, the then 22-year-old resident of Baramulla, was picked up in Srinagar. After undergoing brutal torture at four other torture centres across the Valley, a “barely alive” Yasin was brought to Hari Niwas.

Torture in the 1990s

In 1989, Kashmir woke up to an armed rebellion which lasts till date. From 1990 to 1994 alone, close to 9,945 deaths were recorded. As violence unfolded on the streets of Kashmir, schools, cinema theatres, hotels and palaces turned into “interrogation centres”.

Talking about the torture he faced in other centres, Yasin said, “For those who think Guantanamo Bay is the worst, they just haven’t heard our stories.” Every day, Yasin and the other inmates would be tortured for 2-3 hours. “We would be blindfolded with our hands tied and left for hours, sometimes naked before they would come get us. First, they would thrust our head in water and just as we are about to asphyxiate, our heads would be pulled out. Once you cross this stage, they electrocute you with truck batteries,” said Yasin.

Unlike many others, Yasin was not electrocuted in his genital area. “They would wrap the wires around my feet, wet the ground and electrocute me until I passed out,” he said. Post electrocution, there was ‘rolling’ which involved a thick cylinder, weighing 30-35 kg, being rolled on one’s thighs “until the skin split”. After which, Yasin said chilli powder was sprinkled on it. Chilli powder was often sprinkled on genitals as well. “I learnt to tolerate all of this except one thing. They would make us lie spread-eagled and tie our hands and feet in a way that we couldn’t move anything except our head. From the roof, one drop of water would consistently fall on the tip of the nose,” said Yasin. “This was the most frustrating technique, it really broke me,” he said.

Hari Niwas: Room No.12

Yasin was in Hari Niwas for 16 months. “Before I came to Hari Niwas, I thought I’d already seen the worst but Hari Niwas was nothing compared to any other torture centre,” he said. “Physical pain was nothing compared to the way Hari Niwas made us feel. That helplessness in the hands of an oppressor made you feel worthless in a way I cannot put into words.”

By the time Yasin reached Hari Niwas, the centre was assigned the task of breaking the spirit of men, he said. “Every day when we woke up, we would lie down with our hands and legs tied in rooms that had the previous inmate’s body parts and reeked of their blood, wondering if we would get any food or water at all,” he said.

Room number 12 of Hari Niwas overlooks the Dal Lake. Yasin and four other men were confined in that room. “Today, every time I drive by Hari Niwas, I look up and see that room. I remember all those cold, sleepless nights when I used to watch people walking and driving around the Dal. I used to tell myself that if I make it out alive, I would really like to walk by the lake again,” he recalled.

Winters were worse. The location of Hari Niwas, right opposite the Dal and at the foothills of mountain ranges made it colder. “During winter, if we wanted to wash our hands or take a shower in the morning, we had to spend hours breaking ice,” he said.

For Yasin, his time in Hari Niwas convinced him that he had lost his mind. “We lived in constant suspicion. The officials had mastered the art of demoralising us. They turned us against each other by promising to let us off. So we lived in a constant state of suspicion and false hope,” he said. “Jung mein bhi usool hote hai lekin yahan pe koi usool nahi tha (There are principles even in war but here there were none whatsoever),” said Yasin.

Confined in those centres, inmates lost track of time. Unable to recall exact dates or seasons, Yasin believes it must have been close to 16 months when a Public Safety Act case was slapped on him and he was transferred to prison. “Prison was heaven compared to Hari Niwas,” he said.

Yasin was released after a year in prison. Today, the 46-year-old lives with his wife and two children in Baramulla, north Kashmir.

Restoring ‘Normalcy’

With the decline of armed resistance, some of the torture centres were beautified and promoted as tourist destinations. In 2007, when Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad became chief minister, he renovated Hari Niwas and declared it the chief minister’s permanent residence. When Omar Abdullah became CM in 2008, he stayed in Gupkar Road house and used Hari Niwas for official meetings. Post Abdullah, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became chief minister (2015), he converted PAPA II, another notorious torture centre, into his residence. Mehbooba Mufti, the present CM of Jammu and Kashmir, resides at PAPA II. Hari Niwas, which is adjacent to PAPA II, underwent another makeover and became a state guesthouse for visiting dignitaries.

The Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) has accused the government of “destroying material evidence of custodial torture by facilitating renovation of Hari Niwas Palace”. APDP members demanded the renovation be stopped “in the best interests of justice”.

Parvez Imroz, a human rights lawyer who is currently doing an extensive study of torture in Kashmir, claimed that ever since the 1990s, close to two lakh people suffered severe human rights violations and 8,000–10,000 people have disappeared while in custody. “Many of them were taken to torture centres and were never seen again. It is impossible to give an exact count of how many people went to each torture centre. There were no records, no files, nothing,” he said.

When Newslaundry contacted Dineshwar Sharma, the Central government’s Kashmir interlocutor, on the choice of Hari Niwas as the venue for his meetings, he said he was busy and would be unavailable for a conversation. Sharma, who was appointed as chief of Intelligence Bureau in 2015-16, is known to have spent a considerable amount of time in Kashmir even during the early 1990s.

Jammu and Kashmir DGP S P Vaid said Hari Niwas used to be an interrogation centre under the Joint Interrogation Centre in Kashmir during the 1990s. When asked why Hari Niwas was chosen as the venue for interlocution, Vaid said, “It is the state government which makes that decision. But it would not be right to draw a connection between Hari Niwas being an interrogation centre and the interlocutor’s stay.”

For Yasin, all hopes of dialogue are lost. “Who is the Government of India trying to fool? If you want to have peace talks with me, shouldn’t I walk into a place where I would feel some dignity? How am I supposed to walk into a room in which I knew I had once been hung upside down until I bled and passed out? What is the message you want to give me?” he asked.

*Name changed on request