Kulgam, Indian-administered Kashmir — When Showkat Ahmad’s physique was discovered, it had sores and a bloodied eye. His hair was falling out, and the pores and skin on the 18-year-old’s fingers and legs was peeling off, recalled his father, Mohamad Sadiq.
That was March 16, three days after Sadiq had realized that his elder son, Riyaz, 25, had additionally died, a month after the 2 younger males had disappeared.
In line with the official verdict of regulation enforcement officers, Showkat and Riyaz drowned in a canal within the Kulgam area of Indian-administered Kashmir, about 10km (6 miles) from their properties. Their postmortem studies level to potential suicide.
However Sadiq — and lots of within the Gujjar tribal neighborhood the household belongs to — refuse to imagine that narrative. Sadiq conceded that he’s unsure who’s liable for the disappearance and demise of his sons — whether or not it was safety businesses or an armed group. But, whoever it was, Sadiq mentioned he’s satisfied there was foul play concerned.
“This wasn’t an accident,” the 72-year-old father screamed, his voice cracking with anguish as he spoke to Al Jazeera exterior his house, in an open grazing floor, the place his kinfolk and relations had gathered to supply him assist. “They have been tortured and killed.”
At the same time as the federal government denies these accusations, the disbelief over its narrative captures the deep mistrust of regulation enforcement officers in a area shaken by a spate of latest disappearances — with lifeless our bodies turning up weeks later. Mukhtar Ahmad Awan, a 24-year-old man who additionally disappeared together with Riyaz and Showkat, has nonetheless not been discovered.
That lack of perception within the authorities is accentuated by Kashmir’s historical past. Because the begin of an armed revolt in opposition to India in 1989, between 8,000 and 10,000 Kashmiris have disappeared, in keeping with the Affiliation of Mother and father of Disappeared Individuals (APDP), a collective of kinfolk of victims of enforced disappearances in Kashmir.
“My sons have been brutally murdered,” Sadiq insisted.
A tragic wedding ceremony go to
Within the quiet grazing grounds of Chandarkoot, about 68km (39 miles) from Srinagar, the most important metropolis in Kashmir, a hilly panorama lined with walnut and willow bushes shelters flocks of sheep belonging to the native Gujjar neighborhood.
On February 13, Riyaz, Showkat and Mukhtar left the close by village of Qazigund to attend a marriage within the close by Ashmuji space of Kulgam district. They by no means reached the venue.
Sadiq tried calling his sons on their cellphones at about 6:10pm, he mentioned. However the telephones have been switched off.
“We desperately looked for them close to the perform venue, in Kulgam, and all of the locations we might consider,” he mentioned. At 7pm, the household alerted the police. When the youths nonetheless had not returned by the following morning, they filed a criticism about them being lacking with the police.
For a month, police, the military and native rescue groups looked for them, however couldn’t discover anybody. Then, on March 13, Sadiq’s cellphone rang.
The searchers had discovered Riyaz’s physique in a canal. Three days later, Showkat’s physique additionally turned up in the identical canal.
Forensic skilled Azia Manzoor Bhat, who examined Riyaz’s physique at District Hospital Kulgam throughout the postmortem, advised reporters that the physique was in an “superior stage of putrefaction”. His examination, Bhat mentioned, urged that Riyaz died of drowning and gave no indication of murder — as an alternative indicating doable demise by suicide.
Showkat too died of drowning, in keeping with authorities.
However protests have damaged out over the deaths, which have ballooned right into a political controversy. Sadiq and his household protested on the nationwide freeway that connects Srinagar, the summer time capital of Jammu and Kashmir, to Jammu, the winter capital, demanding an inquiry.
A video purportedly exhibiting a police officer kicking a feminine protester on the nationwide freeway went viral.
In the meantime, in Jammu district, roughly 198km (123 miles) away from the positioning of the protest, police arrested scholar leaders from the Kashmiri Gujjar neighborhood as they protested in opposition to the Kulgam deaths.
The police have introduced an inner investigation into the accusations of an officer kicking a protester. Within the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Meeting, leaders from the governing Nationwide Convention and opposition events, together with the Congress, Peoples Democratic Occasion and Folks’s Convention, demanded motion in opposition to the police personnel concerned within the kicking incident.
There was no official assertion from Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on the kicking incident, nor on the disappearances and deaths.
Surge in mysterious disappearances and deaths
To Sadiq and others demanding an investigation, the deaths of Riyaz and Showkat, and Mukhtar’s disappearance, observe an more and more worrying sample.
In Kathua district, neighbouring Kulgam, two younger males, Yogesh Singh, aged 32, and Darshan Singh, 40, and 15-year-old Varun Singh went lacking on March 5 whereas coming back from a marriage.
Their our bodies have been recovered from a canal three days later.
Days later, two different youngsters — Mohammad Din and Rehman Ali — went lacking in Kathua. They’re but to be discovered virtually a month later.
They’re Muslim, the three males who disappeared earlier than them have been Hindu — all certain by tragedy.
However concern of the federal government and safety forces runs significantly deep within the Gujjar neighborhood, following a collection of killings and unnatural deaths lately. The neighborhood, together with an ethnic subgroup generally known as the Bakarwals, constitutes about 8 p.c of the inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir, in keeping with India’s final census in 2011, although some neighborhood representatives argue that their numbers are underrepresented due to their nomadic life-style.
In 2020, an Indian military officer allegedly kidnapped and killed three younger Gujjar males in Rajouri district. The police filed a chargesheet in opposition to the officer, accusing him of abducting and killing the three labourers in a staged encounter. A courtroom martial held the officer responsible and really helpful life imprisonment. However in November 2023, an Armed Forces Tribunal suspended the sentence and granted bail to the officer, whereas the case continues to be heard.
Three years later, in December 2023, following an assault by armed fighters on military automobiles in Poonch district’s Topa Pir village, safety forces detained many locals for interrogation. Subsequent movies surfaced exhibiting officers beating civilians and making use of chilli powder to their wounds. Three Gujjar males — Mohammad Showkat (22), Safeer Hussain (45), and Shabir Ahmad (32) — died in custody, with their our bodies displaying indicators of extreme torture.
Then, beginning in December 2024, 17 folks from the neighborhood died beneath mysterious circumstances in just a little over a month. The victims, together with 13 minors, exhibited signs resembling fever, vomiting, and stomach ache earlier than their deaths. Investigations dominated out viral or bacterial infections, with preliminary findings suggesting neurotoxins because the probably trigger. Regardless of intensive testing, the precise toxin and its supply stay unidentified, leaving the neighborhood in concern and searching for solutions.
In February 2025, a 25-year-old Gujjar man, Makhan Din, recorded a video explaining why he was about to kill himself — detailing alleged torture by the hands of safety forces.
Din, who died by suicide, was questioned over suspicious Pakistani contacts — and was not tortured — the police claimed.
That isn’t a narrative many Kashmiri Gujjars imagine.
“Our folks disappear, and we’re advised to remain quiet,” mentioned Abid Awan, an 18-year-old neighbour of Sadiq in Kulgam.
“We dwell in concern, understanding that our voices are ignored, and our struggling is dismissed. It seems like we don’t exist to these in energy.”
‘Ready for demise’
Chandi Awan’s frail fingers trembled because the 80-year-old father of Mukhtar, the lacking 24-year-old in Kulgam, clutched his strolling stick.
“Mukhtar was the sunshine of my eyes. With out him, my world has fallen into darkness,” Awan mentioned, surrounded by grieving kinfolk, as he sat exterior his home, roughly 12km (7.5 miles) from Sadiq’s house. “The ache is insufferable – it feels as if I’m ready for demise.”
Mohammad Jeelani Awan, Mukhtar’s brother, mentioned the federal government’s clarification for the deaths of Showkat and Riyaz doesn’t make sense. “Their belongings, together with playing cards, cellphones, and money, have been dry. How is that this doable?” he mentioned.
Each evening, as he tries to sleep, all he sees is his brother’s face, he mentioned.
“The smile that when lit up our house, the goals he had. It’s laborious to imagine he’s gone, taken from us in such an unforgiving method. I can’t assist however really feel I failed him, that I couldn’t defend him,” mentioned Jeelani, letting out a scream. “I want there was a method to flip again time, to provide him the life he deserved.”
The households say they are going to proceed to hunt justice.
“We won’t let this go, and demand a good and unbiased probe,” mentioned 65-year-old Ghulam Nabi, uncle of Showkat and Riyaz.
In the meantime, Riyaz’s spouse, Najma Begum, sat quietly in a nook of her one-storey home, her face pale, eyes swollen from the tears. In a single hand she clutched a handkerchief, and within the different {a photograph} of her husband. Silent sobs shook her physique as she stared on the {photograph}, then hugged her eight-year-old daughter.
“All we would like is justice, nothing extra, nothing much less. If the regulation actually exists, we are going to get justice,” she cried.
“They’ve killed him. They’ve killed my Riyaz.”
