Train journey to India from occupied Jammu by Kashmiris has become nightmarish due to brutal treatment meted out to them by police.
According to Kashmir Media Service, personnel of Indian Punjab police grab every Kashmiri passenger branding him a terrorist and force him to disembark to suffer inhuman treatment till he pays the ransom to get his release.
Police personnel begin the hunt for Kashmiri travellers as soon as the trains enter Indian Territory. As a standard practice the Kashmiri travellers are carried away along with their baggage.
The hapless Kashmiri passengers are taken to the police station and held in captivity till they are relieved of the cash they carry with them. Those who don't pay go through hell.
A Kashmiri lady Saimina, 22 and her brother Suhail 19 were returning home from Bangalore recently when they were dragged from the sleeper bogie some where in India by police.
Salma pleaded with the policemen to spare him. And there came the verdict both brother and sister were "terrorists." The policemen abused and physically assaulted them and yet nobody in the train helped. The co-passengers acted as silent spectators while they were brought down on a railway station along with their luggage. Soon the policemen hit the bottom line: they wanted all cash the two were carrying. Suhail and Salma paid Rs 2000 and were let off.
Abdul Karim (38) recently received the news of his brother being terminally ill in South India state of Kerela. Karim hurriedly arranged for a ticket and boarded the train from Jammu, As he was struggling to sleep in the night, Karim got the call, "Get down from the sleeper."
The standard modus operandi followed and he was relieved of Rs 20,000. Karim reached Kerela after eight days only to offer Fateha at the grave of his already dead brother.
The ordeal for common Kashmiris does not end with the trains only. In Delhi while the Delhi police keeps constantly intruding into their privacy everywhere, hotels in the capital are out-of-bounds for Kashmiris. Although the tragic murder of famous Kashmiri singer, Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, in a train by "unknown assailants" made the puppet Mufti government ask the Punjab government for a probe into the incident, hardly any progress has been made in the investigations so far.
Sheikh's murder has been swept into oblivion and so could be the case with many more Kashmiris, who do not bribe the cops while travelling through the danger zone by train.