Fizala Khan
Tragedy befell the house of Ghulam Mohammad Lone, a resident of Kangan, Ganderbal in South of Kashmir on the intervening night of 29th and 30th August in 1994.
The trauma of which, along with the continuum of the haunting memory, the displaced pillowcase and woolen blankets stained with blood does not let Manzoor Lone, his 29 – year – old son sleep.
Ghulam Mohammad Lone was a 35 – year – old freelance reporter and proprietor of the only news agency at Kangan in the 1990s called ‘Lone News Agency’.
On the intervening night of 29th and 30th August, Army men allegedly entered the house of Ghulam Mohammad Lone and opened fire on him and his 8-year-old son, Shakeel Lone, who died with the corner of the blanket clenched in his hand.
Manzoor Lone spoke to The Kashmiriyat and said, “My father was a fearless journalist. But he was scared for his family. He knew to only separate the truth from the malice. That is what killed him. The power of his pen and the power of truth silenced him forever”.
Lone was a man of principle and did not compromise on his morals and truth. He was known for his fearlessness and professional ethics.
Armed forces of the 197-Punjab Regiment, then posted at Kangan wanted Manzoor Lone to not write about the fake encounter they staged on the 18th of August, that killed two locals. According to Lone’s family, he was called by the forces for interrogation multiple times and was even threatened that there would be repercussions if he told anyone.
The family alleges that he was forced to not publish the news.
Days after the probe, Manzoor started talking about the fake encounter and told his colleagues that he was working on the story. Before the news could get published, Ghulam Mohammad Lone was killed in cold – blood.
His son, Manzoor Lone told The Kashmiriyat, “At around 11:20 pm, a personnel from 197 – Punjab Regiment along with a local of the area, knocked on our door and asked us to come in. As we opened the door, they entered in a rush and went to the room where my father was sleeping, my brother was sleeping with him in the same bed. I, along with my mother, my sister and my younger brother were in the same room, but we slept on the floor”.
“They straight away fired at my father. One of the shots that was fired hit my brother Shakeel in his stomach, we saw his gut fall to the ground after the thrust from the bullet. My father died on the spot, but we rushed my brother to the hospital. The doctors declared him dead on arrival,” he added.
His wife, Raja Begum spoke to The Kashmiriyat and said, “Feelings of anxiety and guilt continue to be commonplace as the memory of loosing my love, it is of my own death, the effects are profound,” she said.
“Nobody understood the depth of the pain, and [widows] we feel that people don’t understand the widespread impact of losing a spouse to murder,” she said.
“One of my greatest fears was that he’ll be forgotten,” she said. “It’s terrifying to think that so many of the memories we had together, the knowledge of who he was and the responsibility of having to pass that on to my son, how do I live with his clothes and the blanket of my Shakeel stained with blood?,” she added.
“We had 5 kids. My husband and my son were murdered and my younger daughter passed away from her weakened heart. She missed her father a lot. She would only talk about the blood and the smell that reeked our house, the smell of gunpowder and blood. She died of a cardiac arrest, only years after her father,” Raja Begum said.
While his son, Manzoor has made consistent efforts to reopen the old case, he says that circling and navigating the truth in cases like these are difficult, with the lost time, mysteries and malice in the system, he feels like he is knocking on empty doors.
According to him, “The charge sheet never saw the light of day, the report said an ‘unidentified gunman’ killed my father. We still do not know who is to be blamed for the murder officially. It gets hard to provide for my family, my kids, my younger brother and my wife. We were not provided with any relief funds as well. We did it on our own. They silenced the truth forever, but we are the testaments of what my father believed in”.
With the unending struggle for investigation and truth, the impunity for killers of journalists in India never existed.
CPJ’s Aliya Iftikhar on Impunity Index 2020, said that murder is the highest form of censorship. She said, “It is unfortunate that India has been consistently on the list. Since 1992 at least 36 journalists have been murdered but only two convictions occurred in these cases – setting an alarming precedent”.
In the Global Impunity Index, the CPJ defines murder as “a deliberate attack against a specific journalist in relation to the victim’s work.”
It excludes cases where the journalists were killed in combat or on dangerous assignments.
With hope, Manzoor Lone still believes that the system may help his bereaved family to probe an investigation. He said, “It is never too late for justice”.