In Photos: A Weary Lake in Srinagar
The Dal Lake in Kashmir's Srinagar is more than a natural marvel, it is a site of paradise itself. For centuries, poets have described its beauty, framed by the majestic Zabarwan Mountains.
Conflict has now taken centre stage. The valley has witnessed unimaginable violence, with countless lives lost, and now new political turmoil continues. Still, the lake remains, a shimmering body of water along the picturesque Boulevard Road, bearing silent testimony to the time that passes.
In recent years, reports have noted how the Dal Lake has fallen into distress. Pollution chokes its shallow waters which are overgrown with weeds. The lake is dotted with houseboats and shikaras (small wooden boats) that still aim to give tourists a taste of its former glory. But careless and insensitive behaviour – littering with cola cans, plastic bottles, and food wrappers – has marred its beauty.
Years of neglect and the absence of strict enforcement have clogged the lake, threatening the lotus plants that once thrived in it. Although a law has been introduced to fine violators, enforcement remains weak.
Today, the Dal Lake which was once synonymous with Kashmir, struggles to maintain its identity.
Militancy too has cast a dark shadow. Blasts have rocked the lake's shores, and in 2013, the murder of Sarah Elizabeth, a Dutch tourist on a houseboat, left a scar on its history.
More recently, tensions between India and Pakistan, especially after the Pahalgam massacre in which 26 civilians were killed, have brought fresh instability. Retaliatory strikes, drone incursions, and air skirmishes have stirred fears once again. Tourism has come to a halt.
Altaf Chapri, owner of the houseboat called 'Sukoon' (meaning 'peace'), told The Wire:
'The recent conflict has cast a heavy shadow over this delicate ecosystem. The people of the lake including houseboat owners, shikara-wallahs, artisans, and farmers, who have long stood as ambassadors of peace and warmth, now find themselves pushed to the edge again. For many, the months of May and June are not just seasons, they're lifelines. It's during these weeks that most of the year's sustenance is earned.'
Chapri, whose father witnessed years of conflict and who himself grew up during Kashmir's most violent years, adds:
'What makes it all the more heartbreaking is that I know people who've poured their savings, their borrowed hopes, and their silent prayers into preparing for this season. Loans taken on high interest, houseboats lovingly restored, shikaras painted anew – all in anticipation of guests who may never arrive. There's pain in these waters, yes, but also resilience.'
The spirit of Dal Lake is not easily broken. Love for the land and for those who visit it endures.
Javed Dar, a boatman who has been rowing for over 40 years, believes Kashmiri hospitality will bring back the tourists.
'I've seen the valley in its worst days,' he says. 'This feels like a temporary phase. Things will get better.'
My photographs are a visual chronicle of this weary lake, scarred by conflict and strangled by pollution. Even in its tired state, Dal continues to reflect both suffering and strength.
All photographs are by Shome Basu.
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The Wire
10 hours ago
- The Wire
'Used Torture For Confession': After 19 Years in Jail, All 12 Men Convicted of 7/11 Train Blasts Acquitted
This acquittal raises serious questions on the role played by the state investigating agency, in this case the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS), in investigating the case. Mumbai: In a significant judgment, the Bombay high court today, July 21, acquitted all 12 men who were earlier convicted and sentenced to death (five of them) and life term (seven) for 'participating' in the deadly serial train blasts of July 11, 2006. The judgement came 19 years since the incident and the men have languished in jail through this time. Only one person, Wahid Shaikh, was acquitted in 2015 after the trial court found no evidence against him. He too had languished in jail for nine years. Abdul Wahid Shaikh at his house. Photo: File/The Wire. Wahid told The Wire that the special court, comprising Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak, fully accepted the defence's argument that they were brutally tortured and their confessions were forcefully extracted. 'We have maintained all along that not just me but all the other 12 men were falsely implicated in the case. We stand vindicated today,' an emotional Wahid said over phone. The judgement copy that was made available around noon reflected Wahid's words. 'Confessional statements were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds, including some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied,' the 667- pages judgement stated. Justice Kilor and Chandak also pointed out that the accused persons have 'succeeded in establishing the fact of torture inflicted on them to extort confessional statements, etc.' Confessional statements, they observed, were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds, including some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied. 'Identical Part-I and Part-II of some of the confessional statements,' the judgement points out, as one of the 10 points for accepting the defence's argument that the defendants were physically and mentally tortured. Over the past six months, the high court had heard the appeals filed by both the government and the convicted men. This acquittal raises serious questions on the role played by the state investigating agency, in this case the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS), in probing the case. On July 11, 2006, seven bombs had exploded in different local trains on the western line of the Mumbai railways. A total of 189 persons had died and over 820 were seriously injured. The police's case was that the accused persons had assembled bombs in a pressure cooker and had planted it on the train in the evening, which is a very busy time for commuters in the city. The Congress government, which was in power in the state then, had handed over the investigation immediately to the state ATS. Several cases handled by the ATS around that period under the Congress leadership, including the Malegaon 2006 blast case, have raised serious questions of the communal biases in the police and wrong implication of Muslim youth in terror cases. In Malegaon 2006 blast case, the Muslim men were eventually exonerated after the National Investigating Agency (NIA) took over and the new line of investigations showed that the terror blast was an handiwork of accused persons belonging to Hindu community. Among those convicted, five persons – Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan – were awarded the death penalty after the special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court found them guilty of 'planting the bombs', along with undergoing training for terror activities, and conspiracy, among other accusations. The seven others who were sentenced to life (unto death) are Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latiur Rehman Shaikh. The men have, all through this time, been denied bail. Even in extreme situations like the COVID- 19 pandemic and loss of family members, the incarcerated men were denied any kind of release by the judiciary. Today, the high court has released them all on a simple 'Personal Recognizance (PR)' Bond, which means they can walk out without having to make any financial payment for their release. Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh's son Sohail told The Wire that the family members are waiting to get a copy of the judgement before rushing to the various prisons that the 12 men have been incarcerated in at the moment. 'My father is in Nagpur jail. Since there is no release condition, I am hoping he returns home today itself,' Sohail said. Frequent visits, sustained torture Mohammad Ali. Photo: By arrangement. Last month, The Wire had published a detailed piece on the sustained torture that the families, including Ali's, have been facing from law enforcement despite the men being firmly in jail. Ali's family had alleged that different departments of the Mumbai police would keep frequenting their homes and asking for Ali's whereabouts, even when he was in their custody. This is one of the common tactics that states resort to in order to intimidate families and ensure they do not file complaints against them. 'After this judgement, we just hope our lives will finally begin,' said Sohail, who was a little boy when his father was arrested in 2006. Sohail, now working with a private firm in the city, had earlier told this reporter that he barely got a chance to be a child. 'We had to grow up too soon and assume responsibilities. We have always been in the firefighting mode,' he had said in a conversation in June. Wahid, who was a school teacher at the time of his arrest, transformed into a fierce activist on his release in 2015. He started 'Innocence Network', a campaign for the release of the 12 others. He wrote books on his life in jail, researched on the Indian carceral system and obtained a PhD degree recently on the same. He, along with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, once only a socio-religious organisation and now a full-fledged legal aid organisation, worked meticulously on the case. A battery of lawyers, including Wahab Shaikh, Sharif Shaikh, Yug Mohit Chaudhry, Payoshi Roy, Stuti Rai, senior advocate and former Odisha high court chief justice S. Muralidhar and Nitya Ramakrishnan among many others worked on this case. The ATS had claimed that the men were a part of the banned terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and that the conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan. On September 29, 2006, over two months after the blast, the then police commissioner of Mumbai police, A.N. Roy had claimed that two Kashmiri men had gone to a local market and purchased pressure cookers from two shops. These pressure cookers, Roy had claimed, were used in assembling the highly explosive bombs. The blast came to be known as 'pressure cooker blast case'. The media reporting at that time was entirely based on what the police would share in the press conferences and all the men were accused of a whole range of things, from visiting Pakistan for arms training to storing Research Department Explosives (RDX), ammonium nitrate, nitrite and petroleum hydrocarbon oil in their houses. The pressure cooker theory soon vanished and it found no mention in the chargesheet. Eight years later, at the time of the final submission before the MCOCA court, the special public prosecutor in the case, Raja Thakare, reintroduced the theory. Advocate Ramakrishnan and her associate Rai, in their final submissions to the high court, meticulously punctured these inconsistencies in the investigation. The police had claimed that two months after the serial bomb blasts, two men had come forward to claim that in May 2006, two 'Kashmiri-looking youths' had bought pressure cookers in large quantities. The statements of these two men were recorded. The two men should have been treated as crucial witnesses but the investigating agency decided to simply drop their statements at the time of the trial, terming them as 'not credible'. 'Instead of trying to chase after that lead, or exposing the current accused to identification by the shopkeepers, which any honest investigation would have done, these shopkeepers were dropped as 'not credible'. Why they were unreliable, is not clear. What is clear is that the pressure cooker angle was picked up, and incorporated against the present accused/appellants. As long as two and a half months after the arrest of A-6 (Ali) and A-3 (Mohd. Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh), now suddenly discoveries and disclosures are set up by the investigators leading to pressure cookers (on 29.09.2006) and their parts (on 08.10.2006),' Ramakrishnan and Rai argue in their written submissions. 'It is impossible to believe the version of witnesses that accused had mentioned pressure cookers in their interrogation in September, because the story of pressure cookers only occurred to ATS after 28.09.2006 after recording statements of shopkeepers that Kashmiri youths had bought pressure cookers en masse. Throughout this period, ATS said that the accused were giving them no lead. In fact, not a single remand application was taken on the ground that they had to identify pressure cookers or the accused had talked about pressure cookers,' they argued. The lawyers also raised questions about the application of the draconian MCOCA law in the case. Section 23(1) MCOCA, the lawyers pointed out, requires prior approval of a police officer not below the rank of the Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP) before any information about a commission of an offence under MCOCA is recorded. The officer, S.K. Jaiswal, the then deputy Inspector General of Police/Addl. Commissioner of Police, Anti Terrorism Squad, Mumbai, who allegedly had given the required approval, was never examined. The HC, accepting the argument, noted: 'Shri. Jaiswal, who granted the prior approval, did not enter into the witness box to prove the contents of the letter of prior approval. Mere identification of signature of Shri. Jaiswal by PW-174 does not prove the contents of prior approval.' In the last set of arguments, advocate Muralidhar, who appeared for Muzzamil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, and Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman Shaikh looked in detail at the lapses in investigation and how the confession statements of the defendants were extracted forcefully. Under the stringent MCOCA law, confessions made before a police officer are admissible in a court, making the situation even more precarious for accused. He also had called the entire investigation a 'media trial'. His entire submission focused on bringing out the biased nature of the investigation. Murlidhar, in his written submission had argued: "Innocent people are sent to jail and then years later when they are released from jail there is no possibility for reconstruction of their lives… From last 17 years (now 19) these accused are in jail. They haven't stepped out even for a day. The majority of their prime life is gone. In such cases where there is a public outcry, the approach by police is always to first assume guilt and then go from there.' On the behaviour of the police, Muralidhar had said: 'Police officers take press conferences in such cases, and the way the media covers the case, it kind of decides the guilt of a person. In many such terror cases, investigating agencies have failed us miserably.' 'And then after years, the accused are acquitted and then no one gets closure. We have a history of failures in probes in terror cases. But it is not too late now. The court can set it right,' Muralidhar had said in his concluding arguments. The acquittal puts into focus not just the fact that 12 men had to languish in jail for close to two decades – and Wahid, for nine years – but also the fact that the families of the many people who died in the attack still do not know who perpetrated them. With this acquittal, the state police have a lot of answering to do. This is a developing story and will be updated. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
India.com
2 days ago
- India.com
JeM Terror Recruitment Module Busted In Jammu And Kashmir; 10 Detained
A terror recruitment and financing module operated by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander Abdullah Ghazi, alias Shaukat Ali, from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, has been busted. Ten individuals have been detained for questioning. The Counter-Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) traced suspicious technical signatures through a specific encrypted messaging application widely used by terrorists and their handlers for coordinating, financing, and executing terror activities during today's raids. The investigation revealed that Ghazi was in continuous contact with local Kashmiri youth, attempting to radicalise them for recruitment into JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Raids were conducted at 10 locations with a focus on disrupting a terrorist sleeper cell and recruitment module. Sleeper cells consist of individuals who blend into society, often without the knowledge of family or friends and engage in covert activities such as target killings, grenade attacks, or distributing terrorist propaganda. During the raids, several documents and digital devices, including mobile phones, were seized, providing critical evidence to unravel the terror network. Ten suspects were detained for allegedly using encrypted apps to coordinate with handlers across the border. The operation highlighted a shift in terror strategy toward 'Cyber Jihad,' where Pakistan-based operatives use encrypted apps, proxy numbers (including Indian ones), and virtual identities to radicalize youth. The process involves identifying vulnerable individuals on public platforms, then shifting to encrypted apps for mission assignments such as surveillance, arms transport, target selection and luring them with promises of financial rewards and religious justification. This is the fifth major digital terror module dismantled by CIK, following similar operations against Pakistan-based terrorist handlers. With declining local recruitment, Pakistan-based terror groups like JeM and LeT have increasingly relied on digital platforms for radicalising and recruiting Kashmiri youth into terror organisations.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Indian Express
Police raid 10 locations in Kashmir as part of probe on Jaish ‘recruitment module'
The Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) unit of the J&K Police has conducted raids at 10 locations in four districts — Pulwama, Ganderbal, Srinagar and Budgam — early Saturday morning as part of an investigation into a terrorism-related case. The CIK is looking into an alleged 'terrorist recruitment/financing module' of the Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit, handled by a terrorist commander code-named Abdullah Ghazi. Ghazi operates from Rawalpindi in Pakistan, police said. The commander, as per the CIK, was in 'continuous touch' with local Kashmiri youth and reportedly attempted to 'radicalise' them for recruitment into terrorist ranks. Police have also claimed that Ghazi is operating in close coordination with Pakistan's ISI. 'During searches, a large number of documentary evidence and digital devices were seized. So far, 10 suspects have been rounded up,' a CIK statement said.
