A video is going viral on social media platforms, in which a girl named Dr Mehar Rather can be seen delivering a lecture on the condition of Muslim women in Kashmir. In the viral video, she can be heard calling out the operations of illicit activities in the garb of religious and human rights and peddling banned substances in the cloak of Burqa. She can be heard saying,”Burqa culture is the way Islam suggested? No. It was the medium for the flesh trade. It was a medium for drug trafficking. It was the medium for Weapon trafficking. Don’t wear anything, wear the Burqa and hide the drugs. If anyone asks anything, tell them about human and religious rights. Killing people is not a human rights violation, but how frisking people to check weapons and drugs can be a human rights violation.”
“Burqa: A medium for flesh trade, drug trafficking, and weapon trafficking. They hide anything, they don’t wear anything inside, and if someone checks, they say it is a human rights violation.”
Dr. Mehar Rather pic.twitter.com/DvtAgGG9XP
— Hemir Desai (@hemirdesai) January 12, 2025
When TFI probed for the veracity of the video and claims being made in the viral video, we found that the video has been doing rounds on X and FB for a few days now. In our social media factcheck, we have found that it is an old video which has resurfaced on social media in past few days.
🛑🛑 “Burqa: A medium for flash trade, drug trafficking, and weapon trafficking. They hide anything, they don’t wear anything inside, and if someone checks, they say it is a human rights violation.”
– Dr. Mehar Rather at a seminar in Badami Bagh Cantt, Srinagar
(14/02/2022)🤔 pic.twitter.com/1FHCwgOuQi— Naren Mukherjee (@NMukherjee6) January 12, 2025
Dr. Mehar Rather is a Behavioural Psychologist as per details on her X timeline. A larger video, featuring her, was shared from the official Youtube handle of Chinar Corps, Indian army. The video dates back to 20-21 October 2021, when Dr. Rather delivered an address on a seminar, Centrality of Women in Kashmir society.
The theme of the seminar was “Subversion of Women’s Rights in Kashmir.” The video was uploaded to YouTube on Nov 2, 2021, on the official channel of ‘Chinar Corps’.
Delivering the address in the presence of Indian Army personnel, journalists and Kashmiris, Dr. Mehar interpreted the horrific genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits, in a contentious Men vs Women issue, overlooking the religious bigotry behind it.
With colloquial Kashmiri words in between, she said, “Women are kept here to objectify them as prisoners of war, to rape them, to assault them and whatever they want to do with them. To make them commodity, the way they made them today as sex slaves.” She then paints a picture of Kashmiri attire, stating that afterwards started the Burqa culture following which she delivered the aforementioned remarks on Burqa being used as a medium to hide illicit activities.
She added that what has been written and what transpired on the ground is totally contradictory, with google yielding results to blame security forces.
The brutal era of 1990s and Kashmiri Hindu Genocide
It’s not a hidden fact that in 1980s Pakistan backed terrorism started rooting in the valley. Terrorist outfits and their members started persecuting the religious minorities i.e. the Kashmiri Hindus. The message was loud and clear, ‘Convert, leave or Perish’ (raliv galiv ya chaliv). The brutal targeted killings, rapes of Kashmiri Hindus forced the community to leave the valley. More than five lakh Kashmiri Hindus fled the valley to save their lives. Thus, the Kashmiri Pandit community marks the day of 19 January, 1990 as the Holocaust day, a day when a community was reduced to the status of refugees and was forced to live in camps in their own country.
Also Read: 7 times the Kashmiri Pandits had to face genocide in Kashmir
The innocent community of Kashmiri Hindus, time and again had become a victim of fatal Islamic fundamentalism in the Kashmir valley.
