JK Youth’s Father: My Child Was Only 16. Give Me His Body Or Bury Me There With Him

Families of the youth killed on the outskirts of Srinagar in an alleged “encounter” by the army today sought bodies of their children and probe into their killings. The families have been saying the youth have been killed in a fake encounter by the army.

The wailing relatives, neighbors, and parents were carrying placards saying they are seeking an inquiry into the “fake encounter” and at the same time bodies of the killed youth should be returned to them.

Mushtaq Ahmad, whose 16-year-old son Athar Mushtaq was among the killed, said he has lost everything. “Bury me also along with my child. I have nothing in my life now. I don’t need anything. Return the body of my child and that is it.”

The distraught father who was denied the right to bury his son in his home village, on Saturday dug a grave at his village in the hope of getting the body back some day to be buried there.

“Return my child or bury me with my child. I don’t need money. I need only the body of my child,” the wailing father said. “Kill me also in the encounter and you will get a reward of it.”

Class XI student Athar Mushtaq was one of three youths killed in the alleged gunfight in Srinagar on Wednesday. The others were Aijaz Ahmad Ganai, 20, son of a police head constable, and Zubair Ahmad Lone, a resident of Shopian and brother of two policemen.

Soon after the encounter, the relatives staged a protest outside the police control room in Srinagar seeking their bodies. The police didn’t hand over their bodies, instead took them to Sonmarg on the Srinagar-Leh highway in north Kashmir and buried them there.

The families of Athar and Zubair Ahmad Lone collected here at Srinagar's Press Enclave and called for equity and return of the bodies. 

Mohammad Shafi Lone, the senior sibling of Zubair, said there are a great deal of logical inconsistencies in the assertions gave by the police and the military. "We need that we should be offered back the assemblages of our



kids," he said. 

"My sibling was at home at 2 pm on that day. There was no record with any security office against him. How is it possible that he would turn into an aggressor within two hours? Indeed, even we accept for the good of contention that my sibling was a two-hour aggressor, they ought to have called us to the experience site. They didn't illuminate us," he said.

“We want an inquiry. Before this, the same thing happened in Shopian. In the Shopian case also they said they recovered weapons from the dead militants,” Lone, who is himself a cop, said. “We want justice and bodies of our children,” he added.

Last Wednesday after the alleged “encounter”, at a press briefing, General Officer Commanding (GoC) Kilo Force H.S. Sahi said, “We had been getting inputs about militant movement on the national highway. The operation was launched last evening after getting inputs that militants were inside a house close to the national highway. They were asked to surrender, however, they responded with firing, and the operation was suspended for the night.”

The incident took place days after the police in Kashmir filed a charge sheet in case of a fake gunfight in which the army had killed three laborers in Shopian and passed them off as Pakistani militants.

In July last year, the army claimed to have killed three militants in Shopian, saying they were Pakistani militants. But after months of investigation, the police revealed that the three killed were civilians who had come to Shopian for work from Rajouri in Jammu. The police investigation said the Army Captain Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan hatched a conspiracy along with the two local residents “to abduct and stage the encounter”.

The police have arrested two civilian accused and lodged them in judicial custody. However, Captain Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan of 62 RR is yet to be arrested. The charge sheet said it is necessary to obtain sanction against him under the AFSPA before he can be prosecuted.