CBI files chargesheet in 2023 Kupwara custodial torture case

The CBI has filed a chargesheet against a Jammu and Kashmir Police deputy superintendent of police and other personnel who allegedly inflicted “brutal and inhuman custodial torture” on a fellow police constable in Kupwara two years ago, officials said Friday.

In its chargesheet filed on Thursday before Srinagar chief judicial magistrate, the agency named Deputy Superintendent of Police Aijaz Ahmad Naiko and at least seven other officers for allegedly torturing Constable Khursheed Ahmad Chohan for six days at the Kupwara Joint Interrogation Centre on the suspicion of helping drug peddlers.

During its probe, the CBI did not find enough evidence to substantiate the allegations regarding the mutilation of Chohan’s private parts, they said.

Chohan, who was posted in Baramulla, was allegedly summoned via Signal on February 17, 2023, to report to the Kupwara SSP, ostensibly for investigation into a narcotics case, according to the CBI FIR registered on the Supreme Court’s directive.

The CBI FIR alleged that he was handed over to the Joint Interrogation Centre, where Naiko, Riyaz Ahmad and others tortured Khursheed for six days with iron rods and wooden sticks, besides inflicting heavy electric shock on him and the mutilation of his genitals.

The case was handed over to the CBI on the directions of the Supreme Court, which noted that the victim was admitted to SKIMS Hospital at 2.48 pm on February 26, 2023, where his dismembered genitalia were brought to the hospital in a plastic bag by a sub-inspector, “a fact that shocks our conscience”.

Chohan had approached the Supreme Court with a chilling petition describing his ordeal after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court rejected the plea seeking a CBI probe.

Handing over the case to the CBI, the apex court had noted that the high court “grossly erred in failing to exercise its constitutional obligation of protecting the fundamental rights of a citizen, his dignity and right to life”.

“It failed to consider the gravity of offences committed as well as the influence that could be exerted by accused persons being police officials,” a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta had said.