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The car blast near Delhi\u2019s Red Fort on November 10th has once again activated India\u2019s most predictable and shameful security reflex: the mass persecution of Kashmiris. Within four days, over 1,500 Kashmiris were detained, thousands of homes raided, and an entire community placed under collective suspicion. This is not counter-terrorism; it is state-sanctioned collective punishment, a grotesque ritual where Kashmiris pay the price for the Indian security establishment\u2019s failures. The pattern is as old as the conflict itself\u2014every explosion on Indian soil becomes a pretext to criminalize an entire population, while the actual perpetrators often remain elusive and the institutional incompetence that allowed the attack goes unexamined.<\/p>\n
The evidence of this systematic injustice is not anecdotal; it is documented, judicially confirmed, and damning. Since the 1990s, Indian security agencies have perfected the art of manufacturing guilt, securing convictions through fabricated evidence and forced confessions, only to have superior courts overturn these verdicts after innocent men have lost decades of their lives. The 1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blast case exemplifies this machinery of injustice: Mohammad Rafiq Shah, a 19-year-old student, spent 14 years in jail before the Delhi High Court acquitted him, describing the investigation as \u201cshoddy\u201d and the evidence as \u201cfabricated.\u201d His fellow students\u2014Mohammad Hussain Fazili, Mohammad Ali Bhat, and Ishfaq Ahmed\u2014endured similar hell, incarcerated for 12 to 14 years before being declared innocent. These were not isolated errors but a template.<\/p>\n
The 2001 Parliament attack saw Afzal Guru executed despite no conclusive evidence, while Jamia Milia Delhi University professor S.A.R. Geelani was sentenced to death before being acquitted by the Supreme Court after two years, highlighting how academic credentials were miscast as terrorist pedigree. In 2005, Kashmiri businessman Tariq Ahmed Dar was acquitted of terror charges in the Delhi Diwali blasts but remained imprisoned under POTA for \u201cterror organization membership.\u201d Beyond Delhi, Mirza Iftikhar Hussain spent five years in Uttar Pradesh prisons before acquittal, Ghulam Mohammed Bhat lost four years in Gujarat, and two traders spent 18 months for the 2008 Jaipur blasts before courts found \u201cno evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are not mere statistics; they are systematically destroyed lives. Incarceration before acquittal ranges from 3 to 14 years. Courts cite \u201cfabricated evidence,\u201d \u201cshoddy investigation,\u201d and \u201cforced confessions,\u201d yet no officers are prosecuted. Compensation, $6,000\u2013$12,000, mocks stolen decades, ruined careers, and shattered families. Many cases remain undocumented as families fear persecution or lack resources. This is not delayed justice\u2014it is deliberately denied, with Kashmiris scapegoated to display \u201cresults.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current crackdown follows this murderous script with mechanical precision. The Gurugram police directive to compile lists of Kashmiri residents is not a security measure but a formalization of apartheid, reducing citizenship to geography and transforming every Kashmiri into a perpetual suspect. This reflects a Hindutva-driven security paradigm that treats Kashmiri Muslims as an enemy population rather than citizens. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha\u2019s call to identify \u201cunsocial elements\u201d rings hollow when the entire community is presumed unsocial by default. The state demands cooperation while wielding collective punishment, creating a feedback loop where alienation is both cause and consequence of policy.<\/p>\n
What makes this cycle particularly sinister is its political utility. Senior journalists have described previous Delhi blasts as \u201cpolitical blasts\u201d\u2014events weaponized to manufacture consent for crackdowns and electoral gains. Security alerts surge when governments must appear tough, and \u201cterror modules\u201d emerge when headlines demand domination. This is not conspiracy theory; it is pattern recognition. Reckless rhetoric about \u201centering homes to kill\u201d distracts from governance failures and normalizes a permanent state of emergency where entire communities can be criminalized without public outcry.<\/p>\n
The UAPA, under which most Kashmiris are detained, exemplifies legal tyranny. With convictions below 2% but prolonged pre-trial incarceration, it functions as punishment without process. Agencies know evidence is weak but use detention to remove Kashmiris, silence dissent, and assert state power. This is strategy, not incompetence, making every Kashmiri life disposable.<\/p>\n
The Hindutva-led government has elevated this persecution to statecraft. By systematically targeting Kashmiri professionals\u2014doctors, lawyers, academics\u2014it aims to decapitate the community\u2019s leadership and create a brain drain that leaves the Valley intellectually hollow and easier to control. The vague attempts to \u201ccreate a bad image of Kashmiri doctors\u201d are part of this design: when healers are portrayed as threats, the entire social fabric unravels. This is psychological warfare, designed to make Kashmiris doubt each other and the state doubt every Kashmiri. The UK\u2019s travel advisory, while economically damaging, is merely external validation of what Kashmiris have long known: they live in a territory where security is synonymous with collective punishment.<\/p>\n
The Red Fort victims deserve justice, but it cannot come at the expense of innocent Kashmiris. False arrests generate grievances, fabricated cases validate separatist narratives, and acquitted Kashmiris testify to systemic injustice, while the true terror ecosystem thrives in police and political corridors.<\/p>\n
What is required is not a widening of the security dragnet but its complete dismantling. Agencies that fabricate evidence must be investigated, and officers behind the Lajpat Nagar and Parliament attack frame-ups must face prosecution. The UAPA must be repealed, and the Gurugram profiling directive withdrawn with a public apology. Compensation for the wrongfully incarcerated must be substantial and automatic, not a decades-long struggle. Most importantly, political leadership must abandon the dangerous fiction that security can be built on humiliating an entire people.<\/p>\n
The Delhi blast was a failure\u2014of intelligence, prevention, and systems designed to protect citizens. That failure should be owned by those responsible, not outsourced as collective punishment to Kashmiris. Until India confronts institutional rot in its security apparatus and the communal poison in political leadership, every explosion will detonate twice: once in Delhi, and again in the homes of innocent Kashmiris who have learned that, in the world\u2019s largest democracy, their freedom is always the first casualty of terror.<\/p>\n
Writer is research associate at Kashmir Institute of International Relations and can be reached \u00a0@<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0shaziahashrafkhawaja@gmail.com<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The car blast near Delhi\u2019s Red Fort on November 10th has once again activated India\u2019s most predictable and shameful security reflex: the mass persecution of Kashmiris. Within four days, over 1,500 Kashmiris were detained, thousands of homes raided, and an entire community placed under collective suspicion. This is not counter-terrorism; it is state-sanctioned collective punishment, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/11\/429.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187874"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187890,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187874\/revisions\/187890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}