Click to play videoSrinagar: Thirty-year-old Mushtaq Ahmed spends his days brooding over his family’s humiliation. Last month, his niece's wedding was called off after the groom’s family abruptly refused the match. The reason: Mushtaq's family lives in Srinagar’s Habba Kadal area which has suddenly become notorious for a prostitution racket.
Two months ago, a racket involving girls as young as 15 was busted at a house in Habba Kadal. The racket allegedly had the patronage of politicians, bureaucrats and high-ranking officials law enforcement agencies. Since then, several weddings have been called off and life has changed life for every one living in the winding by-lanes of Habba Kadal.
Like in other places, prostitution does exist in Kashmir but the magnitude of the Habba Kadal racket and the fact that it operated in the heart of Srinagar has shocked Kashmir's conservative society.
As many as 43 girls, most of them minors, were used and the clients included some of the biggest names in Kashmir's political, bureaucratic and defence circles. Documents of an internal police enquiry available with CNN-IBN clearly show that the clients, some of whom are now in police custody, belonged to the highest echelons of power.
Police say most of the girls came from poor families and were lured into prostitution by promises of government jobs. After being coerced into having sex with powerful clients, the girls were then blackmailed through pictures and videos.
In fact, it was one such CD that led to the racket being exposed. People who saw the film recognised one of the girls as a resident of their locality. The police was informed and the young girl, Yasmeen, was questioned. Police have now prepared a list of 43 women who were involved in the racket.
Dr. Bashir Ahmed Dabla, who heads the Sociology Department at Kashmir University and has written extensively on women in the Valley, says the racket was waiting happen. “All these girls are from poor backgrounds and they do it for money,” says Dabla.
Dabla has a point. Eighteen-year-old Nikhat Quereshi and her sister 13-year-old Ulfat were brought to the orphanage Rahat Ghar from a village in Handwara after their father, a militant, was shot dead by security forces. Left in the care of their ailing mother, the two children were on the brink of starvation and willing to do any thing for food.
Social workers found them by chance and brought them to the orphanage. There are 30 other girls like them in the orphanage. "When we meet these children, they were in a terrible condition. If children from these backgrounds are not rescued and brought to shelters at the right time, it is very easy for them to become victims of prostitution rackets," says Anju Sharma, counsellor at Rahat Ghar.
Nikhat says her poverty could have forced to do anything. “Majboori mein sab kuch kar sakte hain,” says Nikhat. (If I was that poor, god knows what I would have had to do.)
Perhaps the most interesting fallout of the Habba Kadal sex scandal has been on the lives of young people in Kashmir. Nowadays, no young Kashmiri woman wants to be seen in public with a young man. The reason: parents are now paranoid about where their daughters are once they leave home.
The coffee shop in Srinagar's upmarket Maulana Azad Road used to be a hot favourite among Srinagar's young crowd—a place where they would spend time chatting with each other over cups of coffee. But the Habba Kadal racket changed that.
The shop’s management says ever since the racket grabbed headlines, their young clientele has virtually disappeared. The racket has changed ruined lives and changed Srinagar.
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