first phase, the coalition said. At Ompura in Badgam constituency, the team of the coalition saw Special Operations Groups (SOG) personnel abusing a 70-year-old voter, Khaliq Bhat, for abstaining from voting. Later, Bhat told the team that he was saved greater trouble because the team had appeared on the scene.

In the village of Soibug, located in the same constituency between two army camps, villagers complained that the army had been pressuring them to go out and vote.

In Sunoor Kalipora in Beerwah constituency, they came face to face with Rashtriya Rifles personnel herding people in a bus and taking them to the polling booth. When the coalition team asked the commander of the security personnel, who was following the bus in a tractor, where the people were being taken to, he feigned ignorance, saying he did not know who was taking the villagers or where.

In Zaindar Mohalla in Habakadal constituency, the team came across a big crowd of angry and outraged women. "They said some Special Task Force [STF] men had entered at least a dozen homes, destroyed property and beaten up people for having boycotted elections,” the team's second interim report said.

In Kursoo Rajbagh Bund in Amirakadal constituency, Jammu and Kashmir police personnel were knocking at doors asking people to come out and vote. They had removed their badges of identity.

When the team confronted them, “they excused themselves on the pretext that they were only telling people that the latter were free and safe to come out of their houses and that the earlier encounter with militants was over. This was clearly not the case as per the complaints by the people in the locality.”

The findings of the coalition came out with an interim report Thursday, September 26. IslamOnline has a copy of the report.

Besides official coercion, the team also found evidence of other electoral malpractices. At Ganderpora they found seven burqa-clad (veiled) women, who had no identification papers, casting their votes. The National Conference polling agent said they were from some other locality.

In Bhagwanpura and Ghassi Mohalla, the team also saw burqa-clad women voting even without identity papers. Such bogus mobile voters always came in burqa.

In some places they found minors as young as 12 voting. It Aripanthan in Beerwah constituency, a class VI student, only 12-years old, had her name in electoral rolls and carried a voter card. She not only cast her vote but claimed her other classmates were doing the same.