My friend Manpreet was at that time a journalist in Srinagar. She found out who was framing my husband and who had killed Jalib Qadri. She and my mother went to the police station to tell them the information. The police did not listen to her because she was a woman and a relative of the accused. And because JK Police are mostly Kashmiri Muslims. The leading police investigator said, “If I want I can make you ladies burn alive here. I have that power.”
After one year police units encircled Jawahar Nagar colony where I lived without my husband to do a cordon-and-search. Then they banged on my door and came inside. They grabbed me by my hair and dragged me from the second floor to the first floor. One policeman took my son. They stole all my jewelry. All the while they kicked and beat me and said, “This is the family of Amrik Singh who killed our leader.” In the police headquarters they tied me to a wood plank and kicked and slapped and beat me. They beat me on my head with a rubber plank. They told me, “We will make you a mad vegetable for the rest of your life.” A man with metal shoes kicked and crushed my chest and stomach. Then they rolled wooden poles down my legs. Then they attached sticky things on my body and thumbs and gave me electric shocks again and again. They wanted me to give a false statement about my husband. I was kept there for two days. They kept my son in another room and said I will get him back only after I make a false statement. Finally they let me go. I saw my son then. We were both crying. I could not walk to him because my feet were hurting. A rickshaw driver picked me up and took me to my mother’s home.
No doctor would treat me because they were scared that the Muslim terrorists would kill them. Me and my husband were being watched all the time. We lived a very stressful life.
We left Kashmir after three years and lived in Jammu. In 2003 we left our country for Canada. We applied for asylum and they denied us. It was heartless. We needed help. We showed them all our evidences, still they denied us. In October 2005 we came to Seattle. My husband got a job as a truck driver and in 2006 we moved to Clovis, California. We have no protection. We don’t go anywhere, we have no outings or happy life. If we go out we don’t know if we will come home alive. All the time we feel we are watched by the terrorists. With every noise I think I am going to die. I get scared easily with loud noises. Last year, in 2011, when my husband was just verbally disciplining our children, I got so scared I thought they were here to kill us. I ran to the phone to call 911. I hurt myself badly on my head, chest and legs while I was running. I thought I was going to die even though he was only verbally disciplining the children. My heartbeat goes so fast I feel like a crazy woman. I often react dramatically to yelling and loud noises. Even though my husband was only verbally disciplining our children I called the police and I don’t know what I told them. They arrested my husband and they released him on bail. I am still unsure what happened. The news came in the papers that my husband was so and so and had served in Kashmir. They showed my husband’s picture and our house and told everyone we lived here. That news came on the internet and in Kashmir too. Again the Muslim terrorists began to ask for my husband to be sent back. After a few days a journalist called and told us a magazine writer from India was looking for us. But we knew he wasn’t who he said he was. I saw him drive past our house. I saw him many times. I told my husband that we must leave. He said, “We don’t have money to keep moving. I don’t want to run. I want to live.” The man is always around. Other men too. All Muslim terrorists. I am constantly scared. I keep all the curtains closed and watch from behind the curtain. They stand on the street and stare at our house. Now I keep everything locked. Before I used to run a small beauty parlor from my house, doing eyebrows threading and legs waxing for ladies. Now I feel it is unsafe to let strangers come to my house.
Seventeen years have gone passed and the Kashmiri Muslim terrorists still celebrate that lawyer man’s death. In the newspapers and on internet they still blame my husband. My children are scared. They always ask, “Mom when can we enjoy our lives?” I tell them, “I’m trying, but it’s not in my hands.”
SHE HURT HER LEGS, head and chest while running to the telephone. That’s a feat. What did her husband do to make her withdraw her complaint, I wonder? Maybe she and her children would be alive today if she hadn’t. I particularly love the part in which local police do a cordon-and-search operation in Jawahar Nagar of all places and then arrest and torture a serving army major’s wife. That’s peerless. In Kashmir this story would be received as slapstick comedy. The “scared doctors” bit was a good touch too. Verisimilitude is everything. As for her detailed and knowledgeable account of torture, I hope her husband only tutored her in his techniques and didn’t actually use them on her. “He was only verbally disciplining the children,” repeated three times in a single paragraph sounds dire to me.
—
Amrik Singh’s own testimony was soldier-like. Brief and to the point:
I served in the Indian Army as a commissioned officer. I was posted in various counter-insurgency and peacekeeping duties within India and abroad. In 1995 I was posted in Kashmir where insurgency is ongoing since 1990. In 1995 a human rights worker who I later came to know belonged to a banned terrorist outfit was kidnapped and killed. The Kashmir police and Indian Government is putting this blame on me. I am being made an escape goat. I had no choice but to flee from India along with my family. If I return Government of India would not like me to face any court where I can put up my view. I would be tortured by beating, shocks, waterboarding, food and sleep deprivation or else be killed and never to be seen or heard again.
The application forms were filled in by hand. Amrik Singh had neat, almost girlish handwriting and a neat, girlish signature to match. It’s eerie looking at his handwriting. It feels oddly intimate.
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They certainly knew how to go about their business, those two. How was poor old Ralph Bauer, LCSW, to know that their story rang so true because it was true, except that the victims and the perpetrators had swapped roles? Small wonder that he came to this hilarious conclusion:
Findings:
Based on the data presented above there is no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Loveleen Singh and Mr. Amrik Singh both suffer from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This degree of stress is definitely indicative of individuals that have suffered destructive and traumatic events such as torture, indefinite periods of incarceration and separation from family. They deeply fear that if they return to India these events will be repeated. There is no question that there are persons at large who still seek revenge and carry out their vendetta in various blogs of the World Wide Web.
Given these facts I highly recommend that Mr. and Mrs. Amrik Singh and their family be given protection and asylum here in the United States of America so that they can begin to lead a normal life to the extent that it is possible for them.
So they had nearly pulled it off, Mr. and Mrs. Singh. They were on the verge of becoming legal citizens of the United States. And yet, a couple of months later Amrik Singh chose to shoot himself and his whole family.
What sense did that make?
Could it have been something other than suicide?
Who was the drive-by artist that the wife mentioned in her testimony? And who were the others?
Does it matter any more?
Not to me.
Not to the Government of India.
Surely not to the California Police, who must have other things on their minds.
Shame about the wife and kids though.
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Why does my tenant Madam S. Tilottama have this file?
And where the hell is she?
—
My phone beeps. Strange. No one has this number. As far as the world is concerned I’m in rehab. Or on study leave, which is the other way of putting it. Who’s texting me? Oh. THYROCARE, whatever that is:
Dear Client please attend our health camp. VitD+B12, Sugar, Lipid, LFT, KFT, Thyroid, Iron, CBC, Urine test for Rs 1800/-
Dear Thyrocare. I think I’d rather die.