In the first week of August last year, the stage was set for the Union government of India to remove the special status of the conflict-ridden Jammu and Kashmir. To ensure that everything is under control, the government led by Narendra Modi detained thousands of people across the erstwhile state. The govt didn’t even forgive the mainstream politicians who acted as a bridge between the Centre and the state from years. Dozens of pro-Indian politicians and activists including the three former Chief Ministers of the region are still under detention.
These politicians usually are the talk of the town but thousands of Kashmiris who were detained on the pretext of ‘threat to law and order’ and then shifted to the outside valley are still behind bars, although the government claimed that ‘everything is normal in Kashmir.’
TwoCircles.net is doing a series of stories in which we are bringing and highlighting the struggle of families whose kiths and kins have been detained and shifted to different jails across the Country.
In the 2nd part of the story, our Correspondent from Kashmir Auqib Javeed meets a 70-old man whose sole bread earner was detained on August 6 and shifted to Ambedkar Nagar jail, in Uttar Pradesh.
Srinagar: At 2 AM, in the dead of the night on 6 August, a team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Central Reserved Police Forces (CRPF) banged on the door of Nazir Ahmad Khan in Mehjoor Nagar area of Srinagar city and asked the whereabouts of his 22-years old son Momin Nazir. As soon as Khan accompanied by Momin opened the door of his house he saw dozens of cops corned his house. “One of the cops from the Jammu and Kashmir Police asked about my son, I told that he is in front of you and is everything okay with him,” the senior Khan said. As the Khan could understand anything, his son was dragged out from the house as bundled into the police vehicle. Nazir was asked to come to Rajbagh Police station tomorrow.
On the next day, the senior Khan reached a Raj Bagh police station where his son was kept along with many others who were rounded up in pre and post Article 370 Abrogation.“I was informed that my son has been detained on the charges of stone-pelting and that he is threat to peace.” Khan said. On hearing this Khan felt like the “sky has befallen on him” as he was the lone bread earner of the family.
Four years ago, Khan, a mason, had migrated from North Kashmir’s Sopore, on the wishes of his only daughter, who got married in the Srinagar. Months later, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and asked her parents to move near her so that they could meet every day. Khan decided to fulfill her wish. He sold everything he owned at his native place and bought a piece of land in Mehjoor Nagar, where he built a single storied house with his son’s help. A year later, his wife suffered kidney failure. Soon Khan developed health issues too and had to stop working.
Now the family has depended on Momin, who took up his father’s profession and started working as a mason. “I took all his wife’s medical documents to the police station and showed them to the officer-in-charge, making the case for Momin’s innocence. ‘I thought he might release my son as I narrated the back to back tragedies of our family, but all in vain,” Khan told me. “I literally begged for his release but they didn’t accept any plea.’
Please read first part of this series here:– Abrogation of Article 370 Aftermath: How a Kashmiri mother struggles to meet her son in jail
From the Raj Bagh police station, Khan said Momin was shifted to the Central Jail in Srinagar, where he was kept for two days. Before Eid, he was sent to a jail in Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. Like other families, Khan said he too may not be able to meet his son because of the family’s poor economic condition. ‘It’s very difficult to meet the needs of daily life. I sold some gold ornaments, some heavy copper items to pay the medical bills of my family members and now I don’t have anything to help them’ further khan said.
Like Ateeqa Khan hasn’t heard anything about his son. He wishes that he could at least talk to Momin once and enquires about him. ‘I don’t even know if he is alive and I can only wish that we could meet him soon,’ Khan said. The health conditions of Momin’s mother is set rotating day by day. She couldn’t bear the detention of her son. ‘She usually asks about Momin. When he will come? Where he has been shifted outside the Valley? It’s difficult for me to handle her now’, Khan said.
Khan appeals to the concerned authorities to release his son so that they can get at least a sigh of relief in the ‘life of unending tragedies’ Momin has been detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA). The dossier a copy of which lies with TwoCircles.net identified Momin as one of the leading figures in organizing the violent protest on several occasion which have been disturbing the law and order.
The police officials refused to talk about any individual case of missing person. Howerve the PSA dossier says that Momin along with other people has misused the liberty subsequently indulge in various activities that are prejudicial to maintain the Public order. Momin has been broke under FIR number 43/2019 under section 147, 148, 149, 332, 336, 427, 341 RPC of Police Station Rajbagh. FIR no. 80/2019 147,148,149,336,427,341 of Police station RajBagh.