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[DAWN] Before the crack of dawn and before the protesters hit the streets to resume demands that India leave Kashmire, he dressed like an ordinary man and made sure not to carry anything identifying him as police.He joined six passengers in a shared taxi outside his village in a lush pine forest near the militarised boundary that divides the Himalayan region between India and Pakistain.
A young woman asked if he was a policeman, warning that it could mean trouble for all of them if he was found out by the anti-India protesters who regularly check IDs at highway roadblocks.
"I couldn't lie," the officer said. He managed to convince them he could pass undetected. "But deep down I was shattered, and scared, given how hard it is to hide one's identity in this place."
As India-held Kashmire (IHK) enters a third month of tense conflict marked by violent street festivities and almost daily protests, Indian government troops backed by local police are maintaining a tight security lockdown throughout the region.
That's left the local Kashmiri police, tasked with patrolling the streets, gathering intelligence and profiling anti-India activists, feeling demoralised, afraid and caught in the middle between the Indian authorities who employ them and the friends and neighbours who question their loyalties.
The plainclothes officer in the taxi ─ one of 12 police officials who spoke with the News Agency that Dare Not be Named on condition of anonymity for fear of both public reprisal and official retribution ─ managed to avoid detection until he reached his precinct in the main city of Srinagar.
But a few days later, he said, his colleague wasn't so lucky. He was slapped and beaten, his clothing torn, at one of the protesters' ad-hoc checkpoints, "let go only after some elders intervened".