Kunan Poshpora: Frozen in Time

In 1991, 40 Kashmiri women alleged that Army officers raped them. The case remains pending

THE 1991 Kunan Poshpora alleged mass rape case remains unresolved. The residents are reluctant to discuss the case, and their lawyer prefers to avoid addressing it in Kashmir’s current climate. Although the case has been before two Jammu and Kashmir courts and the Supreme Court.

The case surfaced in 2022, when the Commander of Srinagarbased 15 Corps Lt Gen D P Pandey, during a visit to Kunan village, commented that, “Some women were used by a nexus to create a fake narrative of mass rape by the Army personnel”

Lt Gen Pandey said that, in 2021, a delegation from Kunan Poshpora had met him and narrated how a “nexus” had used the women to cook up a fake narrative.

Allegedly, on the night of February 23/24, 1991, a Battalion of the Fourth Rajputana Rifles of the 68th Brigade conducted a cordonand search operation in the Kunan-Poshpora villages. The villagers alleged that while the Army interrogated the men, they gang-raped the women in their homes.