The Hindu Business Line : ‘…because I’m a mother’

The woods are lovely, broken only by a tranquil water body. Trees flank the almost non-existent road, and mute the sunlight filtering through its leaves. Beyond them, glistening paddy fields stretch out. A bird chirps, hidden among the branches of a tree. A scene of utter peace and calm greets me after a two-hour long and arduous trip from Srinagar to this hamlet in Hyderpora. I find the house, and knock on its door. Parveena Ahangar has been waiting for me and the door op ens quickly. She greets me with a tight embrace.

“Thank you for coming,” she says. We enter a cool, dark room which is large and sparsely furnished, and sit on the carpet. I feel awkward; I do not know how to begin. What does one ask a mother whose son has been missing for 17 years? Perhaps she senses my unease. She begins herself, speaking softly and slowly.

“My problems started in 1990. Militancy had begun in Kashmir. The security forces raided our house on June 2 and took away my 14-year-old son, Mohammed. He was moved to Udhampur, but we were able to meet him. He was found innocent, but was still held and released only after a year. But, before his release, in a nightly raid my 16-year-old son Javed was taken away. We went to the police station and the military hospital but Javed had just disappeared and there was no news of him. A few months later, we were told that he had been seen in an underground jail in Bharuchili.”

That was the last Ahangar heard of Javed and though she and her husband went running from pillar to post, visiting major jails across India, approaching the authorities and spending a lot of hard-earned money, they could not trace Javed. Meanwhile, Mohammed was released and Ahangar filed a case in court for Javed.

“Javed was picked up by mistake,” she explaines. “The security forces were looking for our neighbour’s son Javed Ahmed Bhat who had joined the militants. They mistook my son Javed Ahmed Ahangar for him and took him away. Now we are paying the price.”

Seventeen years have passed but Ahangar is still waiting to know the whereabouts of her son. The voice rises, but her large eyes are dry and her face expressionless. She has repeated this story many times over, and is able to do so now almost without any emotion. Only the steely resolve in her voice betrays her composure.

“I do not want money, I do not want compensation. The authorities keep offering me that. I just want to know where my son is. If he is no more, then just give me his body, so that I can give him a decent, faithful burial.” Ahangar’s case has been pending in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate since 1997. “I have stopped going there and instead we are trying to look for justice in other ways.”

Collective strength

She soon discovered that she was not alone. In court, while trying to find answers to her search, she met many other women in a similar predicament.

Seventeen years ago, 13-year-old Aijaz Ahmad Dar left home in the Maisuma region of Srinagar for work not far away. He returned at noon to collect his lunch and left again. His mother Taja Begum, a widow in her 50s, never saw him again. She registered a complaint with the police but was not taken too seriously. Militancy had then struck the State and the police were not too interested in filing cases of missing people, who, they argued, were those who had joined the militants and disappeared for training across the border in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Taja Begum continued her search, visiting various police stations and, some six years ago, filed a case in the office of the Deputy Commissioner. But nothing happened.

Nine years ago, Raja’s 17-year-old son Mohammed Akbar Sheikh went out to play cricket in the evening in a village in Kupwara district and never returned home. He and two of his playmates were picked up by the security forces. Later, his playmates returned but Mohammed did not. Raja immediately went looking for him, going as far as the district of Sopore, lodged a report with the police and filed a case in court. However, illiterate and without exposure, used as she was to looking after only home and hearth, Raja subsequently forgot the report number and date. A few years later, her 11-year-old son, Firdaus, lost his life in a crossfire between militants and security forces. The tragic loss of both sons turned Raja’s husband into a wreck and their daughter died of a heart attack. Inarticulate and turned into a half-zombie with grief, Raja nevertheless continued to seek justice.

Caught in the crossfire

Ever since militancy began in the State, women have been the worst sufferers. They constitute 48 per cent of the valley’s voters, and the literacy rate, according to Dr Hameeda Banu, a professor at Kashmir University, is about 32 per cent. With the conflict raging since 1989 and claiming the lives of hundreds of men, more and more women are becoming breadwinners.

According to the Public Commission of Human Rights, there are approximately 8,000-10,000 persons whose whereabouts are unknown to their kin. Most of the disappeared come from low-income families in far flung areas — those who can be said to be on the fringes of society. There are three main reasons for the disappearances: those who have crossed the border into Pakistan to undergo arms training and have joined the militants there; those who have been picked up by the Indian security forces and are languishing in jail, and those who have simply been killed and their families not informed. Killings could be at the hands of militants — ‘unidentified gunmen’, as they are known in local parlance, or ‘custodial killings’ by the security forces. The Special Operations Groups, an extra judicial body formed from amongst former militants, is especially notorious for this.

The Association for Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) was formed in 1994 and Ahangar became its president. To maintain the moral dimension of their cause, the association accepts in its fold only the relatives of those who are known to have been picked up by the State organs. APDP does not accept anyone whose relative has gone missing because of the militants — either joining them or being abducted or killed by them.

The organisation became a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) through which it was able to get in touch with the Philippines–based Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD). They participated in conferences, gave interviews, went on hunger strikes, erected memorials to the disappeared and registered protests on World Disappearance Day and World Human Rights Day every year. Though nothing concrete happened, they were able to motivate parents and relatives of disappeared persons not to give up and to continue the struggle.

Keeping hope alive

Ahangar shows me numerous photographs taken with members of AFAD — at conferences in Bangkok and in Manila. “They helped me so much, they gave me confidence in myself, in the cause I am living and working for. They made me feel that I was not alone, there are others like me who have suffered, mothers whose sons have disappeared.”

A half-smile on her face, she looks at the photographs lovingly, moves her hand over them gently, flicking away imaginary dust. These sustain her through her moments of loneliness, of doubts. Suddenly this semi-literate, stocky middle-aged housewife, who rarely ventured out of her home alone, has been hurled into public life, speaking, giving interviews, articulating her sorrow, her cause, answering questions, issuing instructions. And she seems to enjoy doing it — these activities, prompted by tragedy as they are — nevertheless offer her a certain distraction.

Her husband sits quietly, and when he begins answering a question I ask none in particular, she quickly takes over, telling him something rapidly in Kashmiri. When I ask her why it is she and not her husband who heads the organisation and takes the initiatives — things not too common for women in tradition-ridden Kashmir — she simply replies, “Because I am a mother.”

Mothers are shaping the contours of the increasingly active role that women in Kashmir are being called to play in public life. The APDP is the longest ongoing non-violent struggle in the valley, not only seeking information of their missing near and dear ones, but also campaigning for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Suddenly, in January this year, the phenomenon of disappearances occupied centre-stage with the exhumation of a body — that of a 35-year-old carpenter Abdul Rehman Padroo, who had been killed and buried in the Ganderbal area under a false name — as militant Abu Zahid with the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba group.

Padroo was killed by a relative, Farooq Ahmed Padroo, a police constable, who had fleeced him promising him a government job. Farooq Ahmed Padroo is implicated in 12 such ‘encounter killings’.

The wave of indignation and anger that swept through the country with the expose has injected a fresh lease of life into the APDP.

At the same time the organisation split with its lawyer and legal advisor. Ahangar’s vulnerability had surfaced and she felt the lack of education, presentation skills and exposure of the women were taken undue advantage of.

The APDP withdrew from the JKCCS and has begun reorganising itself. Its current membership stands at 300 parents and relatives of missing persons.

Its first move was to hold a demonstration in New Delhi in February. They were joined and supported by many across the country — lawyers, students, human rights activists, artists, intellectuals, politicians. Motivated by the success of this demonstration, the group has now begun holding silent sit-in vigils on the tenth of every month in a park in the heart of Srinagar. Simultaneously it is engaged in the much needed task of documentation of all cases of disappearances.

“I am grateful to the people of India,” says Ahangar quietly. “I know the army is the cause of our suffering, but I also know that we have many friends among ordinary Indians, and I know that I am not alone in my quest for justice.”

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‘…because I’m a mother’