Rashtriya Rifles (RR), the largest counterinsurgency force in the world, stands on the vanguard of anti-guerilla operations in India’s northernmost state, Jammu and Kashmir. With the motto, death or victory, the force comprises 65 battalions divided in five companies—Romeo Force, Delta Force, Victor Force, Kilo and Uniform Force—that tackles the Pakistan’s ISI-funded militants and protects the lines of communication and supplies from enemy strikes in Jammu and Kashmir. Because of the controversial Armed Force Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a draconian law that enables Indian security agencies to shoot at will on mere suspicion, the RR has and continues to face numerous court petitions alleging its men are guilty of gross human rights violations.

In 1990, at the outbreak of Kashmir’s armed insurgency, BC Joshi, then army chief of India, formed the Rifles to fight the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. In the first year, 36 battalions were formed to strongly retaliate against the well-armed militants and compensate for “weak and untrustworthy” local police force.

Since India has a terrible record of social asymmetry, in which caste dynamics play a crucial role, the Rifles were envisioned as a force composed of soldiers from different army regiments with diverse social backgrounds. And soldiers from regular army units were sent to different RR units on deputation basis. The strategy soon backfired. A soldier from one regiment didn’t respond to the orders of his superior as effectively as he would react to the officer of his own unit. The lack of camaraderie prompted the army administration to amend the basic structure of RR. The defense ministry ordered that each infantry regiment must have two separate RR battalions headed by its respective commanding officers. This proved out to be a successful decision, as RR became an effective force to flush out the militants from both urban and rural regions of Jammu and Kashmir. By 1993, the ministry expanded the reach of RR to fight the low-intensity war on behalf of the army. To relieve the funding burden from the ministry of defense, RR came under the purview of Home Ministry that same year.

The Rashtriya rifles story greatly differs depending on who’s telling it. To many Indians, the Rifles are national heroes, liberating the people of Kashmir from a conflict supported by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Indeed, one can go on any number of pro-Army websites and read the bellicose pronouncements of nationalistic boosters of India’s defense establishment. As one commenter on Facebook recently said of insurgents, “shoot these pigs between the eyes…Jai Hind (Glory to India).”

But to many Kashmiri citizens, there is an alternate history. Since the start of their operations in Kashmir, the Rashtriya Rifles have been repeatedly accused of killing unarmed civilians. Most of the men killed by the Rifles have been buried as unknown or foreign militants. Without an autopsy or a positive identification of the body, it’s very difficult to determine whether killings are legitimate or so-called fake encounters. The citizen’s pervasive feeling of helplessness about these perceived abuses is exacerbated by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which makes prosecuting Rifles members virtually impossible.

As Kashmir’s conflict reached an apex in the mid-1990s, the Rashtriya rifles were often accused of grave human rights violations by international bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. On March 18, 1994, an army jeep belonging to the G-2 Rashtriya Rifles unit was damaged and two soldiers reportedly injured when it struck a land mine in Bijbehara, a town in the Anantnag district. According to a report by the Indian rights group the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, immediately following the mine blast, the soldiers stopped a bus that was traveling on the road, ordered all the passengers to disembark and then beat them. Retired Justice Bahauddin Farooqi of the People’s Commission of Enquiry, another Indian human rights organization, also investigated the incident.   

Later that night, Rifle’s forces returned and cordoned off the village, and ignited gunpowder in three houses. One of the houses belonged to Ghulam Qadir Wani and his brother-in-law, Abdul Rahman Naiku. Five members of his family, including three children, died in the explosion and fire. Wani's wife Azi and niece Jamila died at a hospital in Srinagar. Abdul Rahman Naiku was injured in the fire.

According to the recently released book, The Meadow: When the Terror Began, written by British journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, Rifles rights violations weren’t confined to Kashmiris. After the 1995 abductions of foreign tourists by a newly surfaced militant group called Al Faran, a female foreign tourist, reported the matter to the nearest Rashtriya Rifles camp. A major there reportedly raped her.

The Meadow also details the Rifle’s informer networks of surrendered militants (or renegades) and their cash-for-corpses incentive scheme. The renegades used to be paid between Rs 10,000 ($181 USD) and Rs 20,000 ($362 USD) per corpse depending on the seniority of the slain militant. The book maintains that the Rifles never conducted physical verification of the bodies to ensure they were actually militants.

Even the U.S. State Department recognized the abuses of the Rifles and the other paramilitary forces in its 1999 India country report. “Impunity has been and remains a serious problem in Jammu and Kashmir,” the report notes. “Security forces have committed thousands of serious human rights violations over the course of the conflict, including extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture. Despite this record of abuse, between January 1990 and September 1998, only 295 members of the security forces were prosecuted and punished for any of these crimes, and no compensation was paid to the victims or their families, according to the Union Home Ministry.”

In 2003, India and Pakistan called a ceasefire on the Line of Control, the de facto boundary of Kashmir, which both countries still claim. In 2004, the two sides began speaking more and Pervez Musharraf arrived at a four-point formula to reduce tensions. But more importantly, the ramping up of the U.S. war in Afghanistan caused the ISI to divert funding for insurgent groups from Kashmir to Afghanistan. In 2005, there was even a suggestion from the Ministry of Finance that Rifles should be disbanded. The Rifles were spared when Army General JJ Singh intervened.   

As the militancy has waned in Srinagar, Kashmiri youth now express their dissatisfaction through rock throwing in many of the city’s neighborhoods. As a result, policing stone throwers falls more to the Central Reserve Police Force rather than the Rifles. But near the Line of Control, embers of the militancy still burn. In outlying areas, there is also far less oversight. And even as the conflict, which is estimated to have taken 43,000 lives, has died down significantly, accusations of rights abuses persist. In the summer of 2012, the case of 25-year-old Hilal Ahmed Dar made headlines in the Kashmir Valley. At first glance, the case seems like a textbook fake encounter. By most accounts, Dar was a pious young man and not a militant.  Though encounters like this take place with far less frequency than before, they continue to strain relations between the Rifles and the public in Kashmir.

From the viewpoint of India’s political and military establishment, the Rifles have created a blueprint for fighting an insurgency. So In December 2011, India’s Home Minister, P Chidambaram requested the central government to deploy Rashtriya Rifles units in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra- the Naxal-affected states of the country. They are still in the process of figuring out how that deployment will look. Eight months later, in July 2012 Defence Minister AK Antony and Army Chief General Bikram Singh announced their plans to deploy five battalions, about 5,000 soldiers in total, to the northeast frontier where India meets China.  In recent years, China has built and roads up to the Line of Actual control, where an uneasy peace has existed since the end of the India-China conflict in 1962.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Rifles patrol insurgency-wracked areas. They carry out search operations, conduct crackdowns and make arrests. They also have local spies who are placed within militant organizations to provide intelligence. They lead gun battles against militants. They raid suspected hideouts of militants and seize caches of weapons. They also conduct more prosaic functions like constructing a makeshift bridge to help Gujjar Tribesman cross a river in a remote area. The Rifles’ role in India’s Northeast is more circumscribed.  Five battalions there are stationed at the Line of Actual Control, where the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh meets Tibet. When they are eventually deployed in the Naxal-belt, they are expected to help with non-conventional warfare.

The 2012-2013 budget – India’s financial years run from April 1 to March 31 -- for the Rashtriya Rifles will include a landmark 25-fold increase in funding. The new expenditures are part of a modernization drive that will buy new equipment, aircraft and weapons. The expenditure, says commentator Pravin Sawhney on the site Force India, is proof of the Rifles’ realization that while the insurgency in Kashmir has greatly died down, India and Pakistan will likely be in a low intensity proxy war for the foreseeable future. The increase in spending is also expected to go to fund new posting in the Northeast and the Naxal Belt.

Accused Rashtriya Rifles Murderer Kills family in California

There are few examples of Rashtriya Rifles abuses more shocking than those alleged to have been committed by Avtar Singh. In 1996, Singh, then a 47-year-old major for the 35 sector Rashtriya Rifles is believed to have kidnapped and killed a human rights activist and lawyer named Jaleel Andrabi in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Singh had a motive to silence Andrabi, who was outspoken about human rights violations by Indian forces in Kashmir. People were listening. A few months earlier, Andrabi had addressed a UN session in Geneva.

The case of his killing went to the state high court, which ordered the formation of a Special Investigation Team. The team confirmed Singh’s involvement in the crime. It also found that he eliminated any witnesses, gunning down four former militants turned counterinsurgents who saw Andrabi’s killing. Even by the standards of the brutal conflict, Andrabi’s killing was particularly brutal: he was discovered in a local river with his hands tied behind his back and his eyes hollowed out.  

This wasn’t Singh’s only transgression. Local police in Kashmir also claimed to have uncovered Singh’s involvement in five other civilian murders. Before Singh could have been arrested he fled India for California. The local magistrate put out a warrant over Interpol, and in 2011, Selma, California police informed India’s Interpol bureau about Singh being in California. But India reportedly declined to extradite Singh.  He’d already been put in deportation proceedings in 2007.

Singh’s pattern of violence continued once he reached Selma, a farming community near Fresno called the “Raisin Capital of the World.”  In 2011, he received 36 months of probation for abusing his wife. When a Kashmiri reporter and University of California grad student Zahid Rafiq tracked him down in March, 2011, he threatened to kill Rafiq.

On June 9, 2012, Singh killed himself along with his wife and children in his home in Selma. When news of Singh’s massacre reached Kashmir, Andrabi's brother, Arshad reacted strongly: “Had he been extradited and brought for the trail, the situation could have different today. The responsibility of this incident lies with the government of India and the U.S. government, which delayed his extradition.”

From Kashmir to California: in the Footsteps of a Wanted Killer (by Zahid Rafiq, Christian Science Monitor)

 Kashmir Murder Accused Ex-Army Officer Kills Family, Self in US (by Naseer Ganai, India Today)

Rashtriya Rifles Involved in Civilian Killings

In July 2012, troops of the 27 sector RR in Bandipora allegedly detained and killed 25-year-old Hilal Ahmed Dar. The forces’ spokesman, who claimed that Dar was a militant who fired on troops, later confirmed the killing.  

But the explanation rankled residents of Bandipora in north Kashmir, who say that Dar wasn’t a militant but a religious man affiliated with Tableegi Jamaat, a devout but peaceful Sunni movement known for proselytizing, who worked as a watchman for a cement company.

But cops maintain that Dar was no militant; the Rashtriya Rifles higher-ups are unrepentant. “We do not need to prove anything,” Lt General Om Prakash told the Indo-Asian News Service. “It was a group of militants.”

Bandipora Protests Killing of Youth (by Suhail Ajmal, Greater Kashmir)   

Slain Kashmir Youth was Militant, Reiterates Army (by IANS, DNA)

Probing the Probes (by Bilal Handoo, Kashmir Life)

RR Involved in Enforced Disappearances

Families of persons who are involuntarily disappeared have gone to every court to seek justice but in vain. In many instances of disappearance, a member of the RR snatches a man off the street and they are never heard from again. In January 2002, 35 RR picked up Bilqees Manzoor’s father Manzoor Ahmed Dar. She went to the Supreme Court to seek answers about her father’s whereabouts. A decade later, her dad is still missing.

On April 9, 1994, a unit of RR arrested Mohammad Maqbool Das, a resident of Waghama, at his home when he was leaving for his job as a driver in the Government Forest Corporation. Following the arrest, the Deputy Commissioner [a local government official] wrote to the army requesting that Das' family be permitted to visit him, but the army never responded. Such cases are in numbers and continue to swell. Another such case is of Farooq Ahmad Rather, a resident of Bijbehara district, who was arrested by a patrol party of the RR, on February 24, 1994, as he was walking to another village to visit a relative. The RR never disclosed his whereabouts.

Human Rights organizations believe there have been between 8,000 to 10,000 enforced disappearances and most of them have been killed and then buried in unmarked graves.

Over 2,000 Found Buried In Kashmir's Unmarked Graves – Report (by Sheikh Mushtaq, Reuters)

India: Continuing Repression in Kashmir (Human Rights Watch)

Truth, Exhumed (by Chander Suta Dogra, Outlook)

Armed Forces Special Powers Act

After the killing of 112 protesters in 2010, the debate over revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (APSPA) again heated up. First enacted on August 18, 1958, to stanch an insurgency in the Naga Hills, the law has remained in effect  in significant segments of the seven states of Northeast India and, since 1990, Jammu and Kashmir. In Kashmir and in Northeastern states like Manipur, the law provides legal cover for Indian security forces to commit significant human rights abuses. Under the act, it’s virtually impossible to bring soldiers to trial for killings, abductions, torture and forced disappearances, even with overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. In many unprovoked civilian killings, Rifles’ personnel have stage-managed bodies to make the deaths seem the result of an ambush from militants.

Pro-AFSPA

India’s armed forces resists any effort to end, amend or curtail the rights granted to them under this law. Leaders of the armed forces like the Rifles frequently argue that if they eliminate AFSPA from part or all of Kashmir, it will mean militants will feel free to operate. As General T.K Sapru told NDTV, “The Army's concern is that if you have a contingency where you want to deploy the Army on counter-insurgency operations then you have to give them this Act. Without that, they can't operate. That's the basic thing.”

India: Briefing. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) Review Committee Takes One Step Forward and Two Backwards (Amnesty International)

Kashmir: The View From Srinagar (International Crisis Group)

Anti-AFSPA

The anti-AFSPA side enjoys widespread support from vastly different constituencies. Many everyday people in Kashmir see the AFSPA as the extreme manifestation of an Indian occupation that can begin with frequent stop and frisks at traffic-choking roadblocks and checkpoints and can end with soldier shooting you dead with little chance for a fair post-mortem investigation. The Indian military has devoted little attention to the battle for hearts and minds in Kashmir. And the AFSPA is its greatest liability.

Those citizens are joined in their oppositions by politicians from across Kashmir’s ideological spectrum: from hardline separatists like Syed Ali Geelani to the pro-India Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah.

In March 2012, the UN's Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns, described the act as having “no role to play in a democracy.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly echoed this call.

India: Repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Human Rights Watch)

India: Accept UN Rights Body Recommendations (Human Rights Watch)

Omar Completes 3 Years In Office, Says AFSPA Issue Not On Backburner (Press Trust of India, NDTV)

Kashmir: The Riddle of AFSPA (by Sreenivasan Jain, NDTV)