‘Theft of shrouds’: They just want to bury their dead

By Aakash Hassan

As the sun was slipping behind the snow-peaked Himalayan mountains on Monday, a contingent of Indian army and counterinsurgent police laid a cordon around a two-story building with an attic on a highway in Srinagar.A few hours later, police claimed to have killed two militants in what appeared to be a routine military operation against the rebels fighting New Delhi’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir. They later claimed that the owner of the building, Mohammad Altaf Bhat, who also ran a shop there, died in the militant gunfire. Bhat, they said, was a militant “associate,” a term the police use for someone they believe ‘aids’ or ‘sympathises’ with the militant groups.

The family of the 40-year-old shopkeeper vehemently denied the charge. Relatives said he was innocent of any suspicious association and had run the shop for more than two decades before he was killed. Soon after that, a second family alleged that police killed their relative, Mudasir Gul, a trained dentist now working as a real estate agent, along with his office assistant, Aamir Magray.

The following day, a police statement said that four persons were killed in the “gunfight,” including a Pakistani militant using the alias Haider. The other militant, they said, was Magray, while Gul was accused of being a top militant associate.

Gul and Bhat were alleged to have been killed in crossfire. They ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of the encounter. Authorities took the bodies of the four slain men to a remote area, around 50 miles north of Srinagar, and buried them secretly. However, hours after the magisterial inquiry was ordered into the issue, the bodies of Gul and Bhat were exhumed under authorities’ supervision and handed over to family members for final rites. This was later consumed by Srinagar Mayor Junaid Azim.

Since last year, Indian authorities have buried the bodies of hundreds of suspected rebels and civilians in remote areas, denying their families proper funerals. When questioned, they cite Covid-19 restrictions, but it is also true that the funerals of rebels and civilians killed by government forces would attract thousands of people.

Families of three people among the four killed, contested police claims that their dead relatives were involved with the rebels. They claimed the gunfight had been ‘staged,’ a refrain common in reports of Indian armed forces killing civilians and passing them off as militants. Their killers receive cash rewards, promotions and service medals for the murders. “Indian army personnel came just after police had done a search of the building,” said Nazir Ahmad, another shopkeeper present at the scene. “They gathered around 30 people, including other shopkeepers, around 100 meters from the spot.” Bhat and Gul—still alive—were taken along by forces inside the building.

Three eyewitnesses said they heard army personnel blaring a message, asking them not to panic if they heard gunshots. Bhat, Gul and his assistant, Magray, were never seen alive again.

The families of the slain were shellshocked and held protests demanding the return of the bodies. Late Wednesday evening, as the of Bhat and Gul held a peaceful, 12-hour protest inside the press enclave, a police contingent raided the building and bundled protesting family members into their vehicle. Police cordoned off the neighborhood for the night and nobody was allowed near the site.

I spoke to Gul’s wife, Humaira, the day her relatives were abducted at the protest site. She rubbished claims that Mudassir had been involved in militancy. “He was a normal person working hard to earn a living,” Humaira sobbed, holding her 18-month-old daughter. “My daughter is looking for her father, what will I tell her?” Police had admitted that Bhat, a civilian, had been killed in the crossfire, but his family was still denied his body. He was buried along with the other three on the pretext that his funeral might create a “law and order” issue. Saima Bhat, a senior journalist and Bhat’s niece, pleaded with police officials to let them perform her slain uncle’s last rites but “no one is listening.” Magray, Bhat’s assistant, is the son of Lateef Magray. Aamir would have been an unlikely extremist, his father said: Lateef received an award from the Indian government for killing a militant in 2005 in his hometown of Gool, around 120 miles south of Srinagar in the mountainous Ramban district.

“I served India and have got government security. Now I am being repaid with my son’s dead body” the older Magray said.

Kashmir has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan since the early 1990s, when insurgents began fighting Indian ru