Hope runs out for parents of missing

For 16 years, Parveena Ahanger’s gaze was fixed on the door of her house -someday a knock would announce the return of her son, Javid Ahmad, who disappeared in the custody of security forces in 1990. But with Abdul Rehman Padroo’s story unfolding, hope has given way to despair, she no longer hopes for his return.

For more than a decade and a half, Parveena, who heads the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), was the harbinger of hope for the parents of those gone missing, assembling and motivating them to fight for justice. “We want to meet our sons. Tell us if they are alive or dead,” she would demand from the government. But today, her tone has changed, almost sure their sons are not going to return. “Return us their dead bodies, their skeletons,” she says in a hushed tone after witnessing the exhumation of Nazir Ahmad Deka. “It would, at least, give us some consolation.”

The exposure of the fake encounters in which Padroo and Deka were killed and dubbed foreign militants, has left few doubts. “They might have similarly killed all of them,” says Ahanger. “We want that their bodies also be exhumed.”

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The APDP chairperson says that after the recent exposure about the fake encounters, the government claims have fallen flat. “In a recent programme on BBC, Mangat Ram (Sharma) and (Defence spokesman) Lt Col Mathur blamed militants for these disappearances,” she says. “They have been exposed. What would their answer be now?”

Ahanger has a question for Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad too. “He recently said that there has been no disappearance during his tenure. In whose tenure have these innocents been killed?”

The APDP has demanded a commission to probe the disappearances in the Valley and severe punishment for the guilty.