[Prev][Next][Index]
Kashmiri girl defies Moslem rebels and parents to wed Indian soldier
This is from soc.culture.indian. Posted by: S Pavithran.
----------------------------------------------------------
Agence France Presse
October 23, 1994 01:21 Eastern Time
SECTION: International news
LENGTH: 534 words
HEADLINE: Kashmiri girl defies Moslem rebels and parents to wed Indian soldier
DATELINE: NEW DELHI, Oct 23
BODY:
A Kashmiri girl defied her parents and Moslem rebels to run away from home
and marry an Indian soldier, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The event, the first reported marriage between a Hindu soldier and a Moslem
girl in Kashmir, where an anti-Indian drive has claimed 10,000 lives since 1989,
was reported by the Times of India newspaper.
The paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) authorities in New Delhi
allegedly sacked sub-inspector Sudesh Kumar for marrying Tabasum Hamid because
her parents accused him of kidnapping their daughter, The Times said.
"The path of love, they found, was strewn not with roses but thorns," the
daily said of the love that blossomed between Kumar and Tabasum in 1989, when
militancy erupted in Kashmir and Indian soldiers were hated in the Valley.
The CRPF on Sunday confirmed that Kumar was sacked before the October 15
wedding in a Hindu temple in Punjab. It refused further comment.
Kumar had been awarded 20 medals for arresting Moslem insurgents and
capturing weapons during his tenure in Srinagar, urban hub of the Moslem
secessionist campaign raging in Kashmir.
Kumar's 26-year-old bride told the daily that she fled Srinagar in August
last year when her beloved was away on training, and her parents came to know
of her secret love for the 32-year-old soldier.
"All hell broke loose in the house when my family came to know of our
affair," the newspaper quoted Tabasum as saying.
"They began forcing me to marry a JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front)
militant."
She has now changed her name to Roopinder Kaur in a first step towards
conversion to Hinduism.
Kumar said he had been put through an ordeal by CRPF authorities, who also
had ordered a search for Tabasum after she left Srinagar and enrolled herself
as a student in a college in the Punjab city of Ludhiana.
"I was harrassed, made to starve and subjected to continuous interrogation
by my seniors who wanted to know Tabasum's whereabouts... But I genuinely was
not aware," the ex-soldier asserted.
Tabasum says she now has two tasks: to get her husband reinstated in the
CRPF and obtain protection from Kashmiri guerrillas threatening the lives of
the runaway couple.
Moslem militants and soldiers are locked in combat in Kashmir, where the
troops frequently face allegations of human rights abuses such as murder,
torture and rape in predominantly-Hindu India's only Moslem-majority state.
.