V. DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY Houses, vehicles and animal shelters have become the most common collateral damage other than human lives in instances of violence such as encounters or cross-border firing in J&K. However, less media attention is given to this aspect of the conflict as the numbers are either under reported, manipulated, reported vaguely or not reported at all. In one such instance, a Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah who had reported on the Nawakadal encounter was questioned by the cyber police specifically for his reportage of the destruction of property at the site of the encounter. There was discrepancy in the official numbers of houses damaged provided by the fire department (15), while the Mohalla Committee alleged that 22 houses were destroyed in the encounter. 11 In another case, due to cross-border firing at least a dozen animals and many houses were destroyed in Poonch. The exact number of houses damaged was not reported, neither was there a follow up report on the affected households. In an estimate, at least 48 houses were damaged in the first six months of 2020 in either cross-border shelling or during encounters. The disproportionate use of force by armed personnel has rendered families without shelter. The lack of sanitizing operations by the authorities following violent encounters lead to the death of one 12-year-old boy Basim Aijaz, who as per his family died due to burn injuries at the Nawa Kadal encounter site.

Source: Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Six Monthly Review of Human Rights Situation in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir (January to June 2020), at: https://jkccs.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Bi-Annual-HR-Report-2020-JKCCSAPDP.pdf.

Note: Other sources report over 50 homes destroyed or severely damaged; see Huffington Post report on Nawakadal, 20 May 2020 in VDB. In that single incident, the fighting destroyed 22 homes. Therefore, this entry counts the difference of 28 homes.

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