Abdul Hamid Malik, a government employee, never dreamt his 21-year-old son would join militancy. He disappeared on May 19, while on a visit...
Abdul Hamid Malik, a government employee, never dreamt his 21-year-old son would join militancy. He disappeared on May 19, while on a visit to relatives in Arihal village, in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Abdul Malik assumed he had been picked up by the army or the police on his way home.
“My wife went crazy,” he recounted. “When my son didn’t return, she told me to check for a dead body in the village orchards.”
The Maliks live in Heff Khuri village in South Kashmir’s Shopian district. Four days before their youngest son, Nadeem-u-Zaman Malik, went missing, soldiers from the nearby army camp at Chillipora had cordoned off their village for a search operation.
“It was the night of May 14-15,” said Abdul Malik. “The soldiers barged into our house. They threw away all our stocks of food or ensured that it could not be used. They mixed rice with red chilli and other spices. Not a needle in my house was left untouched.”
The day after the alleged raid, Abdul Malik said, he and one of his older sons were summoned to the army camp at Chillipora. “They had seized our laptops and mobile phones,” he said. “We went to the camp and met the...
