A day after a video showed a young man from the valley tied to the bonnet of an Indian Army jeep as a human shield against stone pelters, at least two videos circulating on social media Saturday showed Indian security forces brutally torturing Kashmiri youth.
One of the videos circulating, shared by Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on his Twitter account, shows four Indian troops holding down a youth with their boots and using sticks to beat him.
Farooq claimed the video was made today in the area of Pulwama, a hotbed of unrest in the held valley.
Initially, two Indian soldiers are seen forcing the Kashmiri youth to the ground and straightening his legs. One soldier stands on the legs while the other starts hitting him repeatedly with a stick, making him scream in pain.
When the young man tries to get up, two more soldiers appear and grab his hair, forcing him back down, with a trooper putting his foot on the youth's upper back while the other soldier resumes his brutal beating.
Another video, also shared by Farooq, shows six Kashmiri youth, held in an Indian security forces vehicle, forced to chant slogans against Pakistan by Indian troops.
The young men are being repeatedly struck and abused by the security troops, who demand they shout anti-Pakistan slogans on cue.
"Azadi chahye? [Do you still want freedom?]" an Indian troop can be heard asking one youth, who is being repeatedly hit and is bleeding from his head.
In the latest surge of violence in India-held Kashmir, at least eight people were killed and more than two dozen injured on April 9, when police clashed with protesters during a by-election in Srinagar in India-held Kashmir.
Suspected separatist factions in Kashmir had called for a boycott of the vote, resulting in heightened security and low voter turnout when the polling began.
