Kashmir’s Torture Trail

In the most militarised place on earth, one man is standing up to the armed might of the world’s largest democracy. Kashmir’s Torture Trail follows a Kashmiri lawyer as he uncovers India’s violent secret.

Kashmir erupted in violent demonstrations in 2010, when hundreds of thousands of teenagers took to the streets pelting the Indian Security Forces with stones.

However, while the cameras were drawn elsewhere, there followed a vicious crackdown, which by the time it had finished in April of last year, had all but cleared the streets, extinguishing the demonstrations.

A team from True Vision, a documentary-film company, filmed while lawyer Parvez Imroz and his field workers uncovered a network of torture centres that sprouted up throughout the mountainous state of Kashmir, all of them using identical torture methods, creating a profound fear among Kashmiris.

Donate to help the IRCT support the struggle against torture in Kashmir.

Kashmir’s Torture Trail will be on Channel 4 (UK), Tuesday 10 July at 11:10pm. Watch the film’s trailer

Read more at irct.org

Youths who came out onto the streets to pelt the Indian Security Forces with stones, and were subsequently detained. All allege they were tortured. Some had their nails pulled and their genitals electrocuted. Others were cut with razor blades. Some had their fingers broken.

Lawyer, Parvez Imroz at his practice in Srinigar. This lawyer, an apolitical, non religious activist, has faced previous attempts on his life, saw his family home attacked by the security forces in 2008, and was shot a decade before by masked gunmen.

Haleema was taken from school by the Indian security forces, when she was 16, and then tortured and raped, her story verified by government investigators. There are few statistics regarding the use of rape as torture in Kashmir, a predominately Muslim state, as woman will not come forward to discuss their treatment.

Qalandar Khatana, 45, from Kupwara, in Kashmir, was found by government investigators to have been tortured by the Indian Border Security Force who chopped off his feet and forced him to consume his own flesh.