Hundreds of angry Kashmiri villagers paraded two Indian soldiers naked through the streets after they were ”caught trying to rape” a 17-year-old girl, witnesses and newspaper reports said on Wednesday.
Police said they were investigating the incident, which took place late on Tuesday in Kunan, a village north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
”Two army men in civil dress entered our house in the afternoon demanding food and shelter. They asked my mother to leave and tried to rape me,” the girl was reported as saying.
”I resisted and screamed until my neighbours rescued me,” she said, according to the Greater Kashmir daily.
Mohammad Usman, a witness, told Reuters by phone that furious villagers had beaten up the soldiers, stripped them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village market.
”Police fired in the air to disperse the protesters and rescued the two soldiers,” said a local police officer, who asked not to be identified.
An Indian army spokesperson denied the rape allegations.
”It is all baseless; the allegations were spread by vested interests to malign the army,” he said.
Indian security forces fighting separatist militants in the disputed region have been accused in the past of human rights violations, including rape and extrajudicial killings.
But authorities deny any systematic rights violations and say all reports are investigated and the guilty punished.
More than 42 000 people have been killed since a revolt against Indian rule broke out in 1989, officials say. Human rights activists put the toll at 60 000 dead or missing. — Reuters