Sopore girl denied passport 20 years after her militant father’s death

CID’s questions to Rehana: When did CM assure passports to militants’ relatives? Why should you have a passport? Which ‘maharram’ will travel with you?

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SOPORE, Dec 31: Rehana of Baba Raza mohalla, Sopore, was born with the birth of Kashmir militancy in 1990. Her father, Abdul Rashid Penchoo, was among hundreds of youth who deserted their aging parents, young wives and children to “liberate” Kashmir. He joined the Islamist guerrilla group Hizbul Mujahideen and assumed the codename of Zahid Ali. Rehana was two-year old and her brother, Tahir, in fourth month when Zahid Ali died alongwith some of his associates in a fierce encounter with the armed forces in nearby Chhankhan locality on July 15^th/ 16^th in 1992.

Twenty years later, Rehana is completing her Bachelor of Arts at Government Degree College Sopore. Tahir is awaiting results of class 12^th  examination. Both are ambitious to seek scholarship from Delhi-based NGOs to pursue higher studies abroad. Rehana too wants to liberate Kashmir---not from “Indian occupation” but from corruption, social injustice, poverty and ignorance.

Like many of Kashmir’s young, revolting female television watchers, Rehana’s role models are Barkha Dutt and Mahrukh Anayat. St Stephens and Columbia are nowhere in her reach. Her strong will of serving the society as a journalist drives Rehana to Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Alongside her BA at Sopore, she completes a virtual degree in journalism through distance mode with IGNOU. New Delhi-based NGO, YAKJAH wants to sponsor her studies abroad after making her participate in a conference in Sri Lanka in 2012. For this all, she needs to have a passport.

One of Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s much trumpeted announcements encourages Rehana to apply for passport. On the floor of Legislative Assembly, as well as at press conferences and public meetings, Omar refrained: ‘Family members and relatives of militants will no more suffer on account of the actions of others. Like all other citizens, they will get passports, government jobs without facing any stigma’. Omar had made his statements after it was pointed out to him that Police and intelligence agencies had incorporated hundreds of thousands of names---mostly those of the close and distant relatives of active or dead militants--- in so-called red index.

Scoring a point over arch rival Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s “healing touch regime”, Omar said with pride that family members of militant commanders were for the first time getting travel documents. One of Information Department’s press releases announced boastfully that the beneficiaries of Omar Government’s justice included the wife and children of Hizbul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salah-ud-din. Soon it became public that all of the top militant commanders’ families, including those of the Pakistan-based Salah-ud-din, slain Operations Chief Burhan-ud-din Hijazi’s and another slain Operations Chief Riyaz Rasool’s, were shuttling between Srinagar and Rawalpindi like lakhs of Kashmiris between Srinagar and Jammu. In Omar’s regime, Salah-ud-din even imported a slain commander’s wife all the way from Srinagar to Islamabad and acquired her as his second wife.

In months of the Chief Minister’s reassurance, that came as veritable boon to thousands of families in Kashmir, Rehana submitted her application No: A 031934/6503193411 at Regional Passport Office Srinagar on 03-10-2011. Within days, RPO Srinagar sought verification of Rehana’s antecedents from IGP CID. Without wasting any time, CID headquarters sought the applicant’s field verification from SP Sopore and SP CID Special Branch, Kashmir, vide No: CID/PP/2011/1268-77/11/Spr Dated 28-10-2011.

Even as Executive Police completed its process within next few days, SP CID SB has not received the verification from Baramulla in the last two months.

On 07-11-2011, CID’s verification staff paid their first visit to Rehana’s home. Rehana, as well as her 42-year-old mother, Rubeena, made every possible effort to convince the officials that the passport was needed for the applicant’s higher studies. Not satisfied with the family’s response, the officials began asking for Rehana’s Permanent Resident Certificate (PRC), Date of Birth Certificate, a letter of intent from the sponsoring NGO and many other documents. Not one of them is required by law.

Thereupon, an outspoken Rehana asserted on the officials that getting an Indian Passport was her constitutional and birth right. “Even if I don’t possess a PRC, I have not studies at school and I don’t want to go for higher studies, I am entitled to passport”, Rehana argued with the CID officials. They left with the advice that the “needful” be done and they be informed. “Otherwise, you will never get a passport”, they shot on the young hostess.

54 days later, one of the CID officials tripped in on December 30th. “He is now asking for more details and documents. He told me that since I was young and unmarried, I could not travel abroad without a maharram (close blood relations). I told him that he was confused as maharram was a Shariat rule requirement during a holy pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia alone. He did not listen to anything and claimed that Chief Minister had never declared free passports to members of the militants’ families. Thereupon, I called Yakjah and sought their intervention”, Rehana narrated to Early Times.

“When I tried to make it clear to the CID official that company of maharram was only a visa requirement of Saudi Arabia and it had got nothing to do with an Indian Passport, he argued that I was from a different religion and could not understand the Shariat rules. He refused to accept that passport was every Indian citizen’s birth and constitutional right. Then he dropped the phone”, Yakjah functionary Ashima Kaul said by telephone from New Delhi.

Middle-aged Rubeena’s tribulations don’t seem to end. While the families of most of the prominent militant commanders and separatist politicians continued to get passports and free flow of monetary support from different countries, those of the ordinary guerrillas continued to bleed through nose.

Victim of Army’s, BSF’s and SOG’s wrath, Rubeena migrated to Karan Nagar Srinagar in months of her husband’s death. She worked hard and brought up both of her children at her brother’s home for the next 10 years. She disposed off the family’s only source of income---a sawing machine. In 1996, her house was blasted in an IED explosion, allegedly by Army. It was only during Mufti’s “healing touch regime” in 2003 that Rubeena returned to Sopore alongwith both of her children. Running an embroidery workshop, with engagement of ten artisans, she stoically made their schooling possible.

“We have thousands of similar cases. CM has indeed made the announcement but the relief is practically restricted to only the families of few high profile commanders. Almost all the separatist leaders have valid passports. Some of them have even two, courtesy their contacts in Delhi. They have been traveling at will all over the world”, an officer of the rank of SSP explained. He added: “One of the top separatist leaders openly held a two-hour-long meeting with the ISI chief at Amsterdam Airport. But their ordinary followers, even those who have invited them once over a dinner fifteen years back are labeled as men of anti-national connections and denied passports. Same is the story of the families of ordinary militants, dead or alive. Rehana is one among thousands”. He observed that CM’s announcement was just on papers as the verification staff had no accountability.

END