Reproducing Regimes of Impunity

In India, the phrase ‘fake encounter’ refers to the extrajudicial killing of a civilian followed by the official claim that the victim was a Pakistani infiltrator killed in a legitimate military encounter with police or army forces. This article explores the widespread pattern of fake encounters in Kashmir Valley in order to shed light on the processes through which violence and terror become fictionalized and fantastic, with Kashmiri bodies gaining a heightened visibility in a falsified form within a cultural imaginary of national security interests and public safety concerns. Identifying Kashmir Valley as a state of exception, I examine how the suspension of the rule of law gives rise to new agents and hierarchies of power and authority and new patterns of criminalization and paramilitarization throughout Kashmiri society. I also consider how the informalized practices of forced disappearance, fictionalized terror, and impunity for violence are produced and reproduced through the strategic manufacturing of public consent for violence against Kashmiris throughout Indian society at large.