New exercise of house to house survey by Indian police adds to fear, anxiety among IIOJK residents
Srinagar: The residents of Indian illegally occupied Jammu Kashmir said that the new illegal exercise of house to house survey by Indian establishment created a new fear and anxiety amongst the locals of the territory.
According to Kashmir Media Service, one 55-year-old Muhammad Shadab had gone to offer prayers in his neighbourhood mosque in Srinagar when he was given a questionnaire by the mosque’s management. The questionnaire was part of a so-called survey by the Indian police, seeking his personal details, including phone numbers of family members, possible links to Mujahideen, records of foreign visits or a member settled abroad, and even the number of CCTV cameras at home.
Muhammad Shadab told Al Jazeera he had been panicking since he was handed the questionnaire. “I couldn’t believe I had to provide such extensive details – even of my female family members,” said the former government employee now running his own business.
“It was intriguing for all, even for the mosque committee members. They were instructed by the police to distribute the forms, collect them from us, and submit the filled-in documents within a week.”
The questionnaire was circulated in Srinagar and other areas of Kashmir valley and Muslim areas of the Jammu region. Many other residents said officers in plain clothes came to their houses with the document, asking them to fill it and submit it to the nearest police station at the earliest opportunity.
Hundreds of search and frisking checkpoints are spread across the territory to monitor movements of people while technology has helped authorities widen the surveillance infrastructure, with hundreds of high-tech cameras with facial recognition features installed in several cities and even villages.
However, residents said the ongoing police survey adds another layer of surveillance by broadening the information demanded by the BJP government, Indian army and their agencies.
Shadab’s 28-year-old daughter, a banker who “unwillingly” provided her details in the questionnaire, said she was in disbelief over the exercise. “What details are left to be asked? It plays with your psychology. You feel helpless,” she told Al Jazeera.
The People’s Democratic Party said it was concerned over the survey, calling it an alarming development and an assault on the identity of ordinary Kashmiris.
Rights activist Ravi Nair, of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, told Al Jazeera the survey by the Kashmir police is a dead giveaway. “The deep state is doing a mapping exercise for intrusive surveillance … The process violates the privacy rights of every Kashmiri citizen,” he said, adding that the move should be challenged in court.
Mohamad Junaid, who teaches anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, said the so-called census “acts as psyops to create deliberate panic” among the Kashmiris. “No contextual information or reasons are provided by the agencies involved in it, or even whether they have any legal authority to carry out a census, especially since there is already an official census in place,” he told Al Jazeera. Junaid said in a world where laws are meant to protect citizens, such a move would be considered illegal. “But, of course, Kashmiris have no such protections.”
