Kunan Poshpora Rape Case Study

Chapter 3

Kunan-Poshpora Rape Case and its reportage

The village of Kunan Pushpora is remembered as the ‘village of raped women’. On 23 February, 1991, a cordon-and-search operation was conducted by soldiers of the 4th Rajpiutana Rifles in the Kunan-Poshpora village in Kupwara during which all men of the village were gathered at one place while the women and children were left alone at home. After some time, cries for help from the village began to come but the men could not move as they were guarded by the security forces. The villagers alleged the security forces of raping anywhere between 30-100 women including pregnant and old women repeatedly throughout the night . The Village headman and other village leaders claimed that they reported the rapes to army officials on February 27, but they denied these charges citing them baseless and took no action. Due to

The pregnant women who were raped either had miscarriage or delivered deformed children. The mothers of the raped girls was unable to speak due to the severe trauma. The sons whose mothers were raped refused to even look at the faces of their mothers. After begged by their wives,some husbands accepted them so that their childrens will not be orphaned but then also they were never treated with the respect that they deserve as a wife or as a mother. In one case, a 80-year-old victim was kicked out of the house by her son and in other case, one sister was raped, but the stigma casts over all the six sisters. All of them were taunted by the boys in the village and the did not recieve any marriage proposal for a long time. The marriage proposal stopped coming in the village and in three years after the incident not even a single proposal was recieved by the village. Every woman became a baggage on the shoulders of her father and these victims of the rape were vociferously blamed for