Qazi Shibli/ Meer Irfan
In the Winter of 2018, as Kashmir was going through an endless cycle of violence, the phone of one Ghulam Nabi Khan rang in the Handoora area of Tral in Kashmir almost 60 Kilometers away from Srinagar, It was a call from the police asking him to take the body of his militant son back home for his last rites.
Khan though, upon reaching the police station, was devastated to see the corpse that was ‘charred beyond recognition.’
The sight haunts Khan every day even after two years have passed. “I was asked to identify my son from the pieces of charred bodies lying on the floor of the police station,” Khan said.
In a span of Six Months in 2018, Khan lost two sons to an unending cycle of violence in the Kashmir valley. In April 2018, Ishfaq Ahmad Khan his elder son, who was an affiliate with the Militant outfit Jaish Mohammed was killed during an encounter along with three others in the Lam forests of Tral.
In November of the same year, Khan’s younger son Showkat Ahmad Khan was killed during another gunfight in Chankitar village of Tral belt in Pulwama district of South Kashmir.
The family was shattered, however, the troubles of the families like hundreds of families in the Kashmir valley did not end here, their third and only remaining son who left for Delhi, as per the family, to sell shawls, was arrested by the Delhi Police in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack in February, just a few months after the killing of their second son.
The Happy and Loud House Falls Silent
Fatima, the mother of the three Khan brothers, aged around 50, mostly remains silent inside her half-dark room, hoping against hope that something good is about to happen.
Fatima vaguely remembers when her sons were killed. “First I lost two sons and now my lone son, who is innocent, has been detained for no crime. His sin is that his two brothers were militants,” Sajad’s mother Fatima Banoo told The Kashmiriyat as tears roll down her eyes.
Kashmir remains a pending dispute between two nuclear nations, India and Pakistan. Both countries have fought three wars over the region claiming the region in its entirety. More than 70,000 people have lost their lives in the past three decades.
“She keeps looking at the phone and there are times when she asks about her two sons and forgets they are no more, ” a family member said, adding, “She keeps waiting for their phone calls.”
Psychiatrists say that Kashmir is witnessing higher patient inflow after the 2016 Uprising, “The escalated violence and deaths since 2016 have left a huge impact upon women especially in South Kashmir, the cause is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They (women) lose their family members and it becomes an uphill task for them to recover the PTSD that remains unattended for months,” Lubna a psychiatrist from Srinagar told The Kashmiriyat.
The once noisy household, as per the neighbors of the Khan family, is turned desolate now. “Once four cherishing children could be seen playing, shouting and running all over the place in the house, now the rare cries that are heard from the house are wails and cries of a mother and a sister,” a neighbour of Khan’s told The Kashmiriyat.
It often is an emotionally draining sight to look at the house, it is a stark reminder of the conflict in Kashmir and the blood it has cost Kashmir, Arif Ahmed, the neighbor says.
Speaking to The Kashmiriyat, a family member of the youth, Sajjad Ahmed Khan who has been under detention since early 2019 said, “The family got to know of the arrest of Sajjad around February 22, 2019.”
However, the National Investigating has claimed that Delhi police arrested the “Jaish-e-Mohammad militant” Sajjad Ahmad Khan on March 21, 2019, around Delhi’s Red Fort.
Sajad Ahmed Khan was lodged into Delhi Tihar Jail and has been under detention at Tihar jail in Delhi since.
“Sajjad and six other people working with him had been arrested by Delhi Police in February and we immediately got to know that,” the family member told The Kashmiriyat, adding, “The other six people were released after some time. When his father asked police about his Son’s detention, they said that he will be released after some time.”
Sajjad worked as a shawl vendor with six others in Delhi. “He had gone to Delhi like hundreds of Kashmiris, who go every year to Delhi and other places to sell winter stock from Kashmir as chill intensifies across North India,” the family member said.
Caught in ‘Cross-fire’ For being a Militant Kin
Delhi Police’s Special Cell in 2019 March had claimed that Sajjad is a suspected Jaish terrorist and was “specially sent to Delhi to recognize important targets and to set up a hideout in the capital”.
The Delhi Police in their statement though did agree that Sajjad was staying as a Shawl vendor in Delhi, adding, “he was tasked to select specific targets, radicalize and recruit Muslim youth of UP and other states. Providing them with weapon training and fieldcraft was also part of his responsibilities apart from raising funds and collecting weapons.”
However, the family has rubbished the charges and have said that their son is innocent.
Delhi police have also claimed that Sajjad was a “Likely suspect in the conspiracy” of the February 14 Pulwama attack in which a Jaish suicide bomber rammed his car into a CRPF convoy killing 40 of their men.
“On 14th February, the day of Pulwama attack, Mudasir contacted Sajjad on Whatsapp and informed that they have carried out the operation. Mudasir then sent him the video of Adil Dar (fidayeen), which he deleted from his phone,” Delhi Police had claimed in a statement.
The Delhi Police claimed that on the instructions of Mudassir, Sajjad moved to Delhi to establish a sleeper cell of JeM, however, the family rubbished the claims and said Sajad had been going to Delhi for four years to work to sell shawls in Delhi.
“He would go to Delhi every winter for the last four years to sell shawls. the family supported him to distance him from the troubled situation in the Kashmir valley,” the family member said. “The year he was arrested, he had been in Delhi since November 2018 shortly after his brother was killed.
“When his father met police officials in Delhi they promised that he will be released soon, but when we reached home, we heard the news of his arrest near Lal Quila,” he said.
Ghulam Nabi Khan, 54, was a carpenter, but since the killing of his two sons, he remains confined to home. “Sajjad was now our only hope and breadwinner,” said the family member. The Jammu Kashmir Police speaking to the media had said they didn’t have any case against Sajjad. “We are already a shattered family. I have lost my two sons, I can’t afford to lose him,” said his mother Fatima while breaking down into tears.