Fighting social maltreatment and apathy is a matter of routine for the destitute women widowed by conflict in Jammu & Kashmir

Parveez Akhtar fails to conceal her vulnerability, wincing occasionally while recounting her personal encounters with tragedies and treacheries in life — shattered by violent conflict and social maltreatment — which has been unfairly consigned to oblivion.

The 30-year-old widow  was hardly 15 when she was married off by her parents. While she was expecting her second baby, her husband was killed by the militants. Remarried to the younger brother of her late husband, the new relationship did not last long. She was turned out of house by her husband and in-laws just after the birth of her second child.

She was left with fending for herself and her two children, with nothing to provide medical treatment to her only son, Aiyaz Ahmed, who suffered from a heart ailment. “Doctors say he needs a specialised surgery that costs around three lakh rupees. But where is the money, she asks, looking at her deformed right foot.

Her first husband, a Special Police Officer, was beheaded by militants in 2002. She lives with her maternal family at Salotri, a rundown village in border district Poonch, spreading along the line of Control. Parveez supports family income by stitching clothes on a machine given by a local philanthropic organisation.

There are thousands of conflict consequential widows languishing in the State. Relief and rehabilitation of victims of conflict was an important component of the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Plan for Jammu & Kashmir, announced in November 2004. The plan has not percolated down to such faceless widows.

In Saral village, 40-year-old Rashida Bi, who is a mother of three school-going children, has also been disowned by her in-laws since her husband went missing in 2008. “Ex-gratia relief is given to the next of kin only when they produce a death certificate of the deceased. But in my case, I never got to see my husband’s body”, says Rashida, adding, “He was last seen with some unidentified gunmen.”

She is living in a dungeon-like mud house lent by a villager for whom the family does some menial work in return. The family has a dream: A similar mud house comprising a single room but having a proper door and two windows for fresh air and sunshine, with attached makeshift kitchen. “I have spent everything on it”, she says showing an incomplete structure of wood, stones and mud.

The Government’s role though has been less than wanting, as is again evident from the case of Fatima Jaan, a resident of Kaiyan Gontrian, a village at the loC. like other destitute widows of conflict, somehow this woman also continues to live for just another day by begging and borrowing with a faint hope for some support and justice. 

Those who don’t even have a dim hope are the widows of slain militants. In Beoli village of Doda district, Hamidullah was just another local youth, who joined a militant outfit, and got killed in 1996. His widow, Shaina, had to leave her in-laws’ home after his death. She is living with her father, Gulam Ali, who cites economic deprivations which pushed his son-in-law to join militancy — a problem that continues to haunt Hamid’s family even after his death. In the same village, widows of some slain militants got remarried over a period of time after abandoning their children.

“The State Rehabilitation Council provides a monthly pension of Rs 750 to 3,195 conflict widows and 1,716 children of slain militants. It also provides vocational training to the disabled and gives grant of Rs 20,000 to an affected family for the marriage of a girl”, says, Hafiza Muzaffar, executive director of the Council, adding  that the rules don’t allow it to give benefits to the conflict widows who can’t produce death certificates of their husbands.

Social Welfare Minister Sakina Ittoo (the only woman Minister in the State Government), says, “The Government is making conflict victims aware of welfare schemes by holding public programmes. I am personally making consistent efforts to reach out to the affected people. A fractional number of widows who are not getting any benefits under the Government schemes can’t be ruled out.”

The Minister, whose father, Wali Mohammad Ittoo, a veteran political leader, was killed by militants in 1994 and who herself has survived several assassination attempts in past, further states that the Government, as of now, doesn’t have any plans to extend similar benefits to the widows of slain militants.

(The writer is a fellow with National Foundation for India)