Al-Ahram Weekly | International

		15 - 21 August 2002 Issue No. 599 International	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Kausar's calamity
A personal tragedy, with ramifications on human rights and relations between India and Pakistan, leaves the Asian sub-continent spellbound, reports Shaikh Azizur Rahman from Jammu, India

Click to view caption
Activists of the All India Anti-terrorist front burn a Pakistani flag during a demonstration in Chandigarh. The activists were protesting the killing of nine Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir and blamed Pakistan-based militants for the attack

A Pakistani woman who was imprisoned in India for seven years as the result of a failed suicide attempt was raped during her incarceration. The woman has been held in India for seven years on the charges of trying to enter the country without proper documentation. The woman and child were released from jail in a surprise move by Indian authorities.
For years no one outside of India and Pakistan knew of this strange case until it was raised by human rights activist Ranjan Lakhanpal, who petitioned the United Nations high commissioner for human rights in March of this year. Another Jammu-based lawyer/activist, Aseem Sawhney, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) to the Jammu and Kashmir high court seeking the release of mother and child from jail.
Shahnaz Parveen Kausar, 32, from the village of Haryan in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, threw herself into the Jhelum River in 1995 to escape a husband and in-laws who regularly tormented her for failing to bear a child.
Rather than drown as she had expected, she was carried by the river's swift current into Indian territory, where border guards rescued her and turned her over to Indian police.
Kausar was convicted of entering India without proper documents and sentenced to one year in jail. She was jailed again for three months in the border town of Poonch for not being able to pay a fine of $10. While serving this jail term she was raped by a prison guard, resulting in the birth of her daughter, Mobin.
When her prison term ended in 1997, India tried to send Kausar and her daughter back to Pakistan. But Pakistani immigration officials said they would accept only the mother, not the daughter, whom they considered an Indian citizen.
"Technically she is an illegal entrant and had been booked under the Enemies Ordinance Act," a strict Indian law which is usually applied against Pakistani nationals, said S S Ali, director-general of prisons in Kashmir.
The child was given Indian citizenship and therefore is barred from Pakistan. This left the girl's mother with the grim choice of remaining in jail or leaving her baby and going home to Pakistan to face possible death for dishonouring her family.
"So we had to take her back into custody again. Since the daughter is too small, we have allowed her to stay with the mother. Mobin could not be handed over to the father because he is charged with raping the mother," said Ali.
The man suspected of fathering Mobin, Mohamed Din, has been suspended from the prison service and is free on bail while being tried in a court in Jammu.
Until the day before their release the child had been allowed to leave the jail escorted by a constable each day to attend classes at a neighborhood school at the expense of the prison department.
Kausar feared that she will be "punished for the existence of Mobin" if she returns to Pakistan, where hundreds of women are victims of "honour killings" each year.
Sawhney, a Jammu-based lawyer, says he filed the PIL after Pakistani authorities refused, for the third time last year, to allow the mother and daughter back into the country. "I felt the situation of Kausar and Mobin was getting worse simply because of India and Pakistan being on the warpath," he said in an interview.
"Since Kauser's trauma and trouble increased with the misdeed committed by an Indian citizen, India should seriously consider granting her Indian citizenship," Sawhney argued in the court.
Kausar was finally freed on Saturday on the orders of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, which formally awarded Indian citizenship to Mobin on the grounds that she was conceived and born in the country.
The court ruled that Mobin's detention was illegal, saying she was not at fault. "We also direct that as the minor cannot stay without her mother and, the mother being the legal guardian, therefore the consequential order of releasing Kausar is also being passed," the court said.
It ordered the government to pay a sum of about $6,160 in compensation for the suffering of the mother and her daughter and to provide them housing somewhere in the state. The money is to be deposited in Mobin's name.
But Kausar was not granted citizenship, leaving her fate in doubt once Mobin reaches adulthood. The court also claimed the identity of Mobin's father was uncertain.
However, after her release from jail last Saturday, 3 August, Kausar said that in order "to give her child the name of a father" she was ready to pardon her alleged rapist, Din, if he would accept her and Mobin as family. "I have no place in Pakistan now. If he promises to accept us honourably I am prepared to marry him."

Send a letter to the Editor Recommend this page

ARCHIVES
Letter from the Editor
Editorial Board
Subscription
Advertise!

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation