Not a single day in Manzoor Ahmad Wagay’s life passes without digging some land. The 56-year-old farmer is in search of the dead body of h...
Not a single day in Manzoor Ahmad Wagay’s life passes without digging some land.
The 56-year-old farmer is in search of the dead body of his son.
Around 11 every morning, he heads out in his car, its trunk laden with shovels and spades. Not far from his home in Reshipora village in Kashmir’s Shopian district, he walks into a vast landscape of dense apple orchards and mulberry trees. He spends hours digging, then returns home around 4 in the evening, empty-handed.
This has been Wagay’s daily schedule since August last year.
“My heart says he lies buried within a radius of seven-eight kilometres from home,” said Wagay, a soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair.
On August 2, his son Shakir Manzoor, 24, a rifleman with the 162 Battalion of Indian Army’s Territorial Army unit, had come home to celebrate Eid. He was driving back in his car to a nearby army camp where he was posted when he went missing.
A statement issued by the Indian Army the next day said that Manzoor’s burnt car had been found in neighbouring Kulgam district: “It is suspected that the soldier has been abducted by terrorists. Search op in progress.”
Five days after Manzoor’s disappearance, his family...
