Kulgam (South Kashmir)
Sitting in the corner of a dimly-lit room, Nazir Ahmad Magray struggles to make sense of the sudden demise of his youngest son Imtiyaz Ahmad, the family’s lone breadwinner whose body was fished out from Vishaw river in Kulgam on May 4.
Ahmad, 27, a Class 10 dropout who supported his poor parents by working as a daily wage labourer, was whisked away from his home by a joint team of police and army personnel who descended on this sleepy south Kashmir village in the early hours of Saturday (3 May), Magray said.
“I offered them tea, but they refused saying they had to check Imtiyaz’s mobile phone and then he would be released. They would have taken him away only over my dead body if I had known what was going to happen,” Magray told The Wire at his dilapidated single-storey house.
The distraught father of five daughters and three sons, seven of whom are married and live separately with their own families, refuses to believe the allegations that Ahmad was involved in illegal activities.
“He was working as a daily wage labourer in Punjab from where he returned recently. He has never been to a police station as there’s no case against him. If he was a militant, why wasn’t he thrown into jail after his arrest?”
