Families of detainees waiting outside Central Jail Srinagar after the government forces had imposed a clampdown in August 2019. Photograph by Umer Asif celebrating half-hearted birthdays; and to take care of herself. During the dinner, she said, her daughter would often call the father to join -- looking at his photograph on the wall. When a night would get tough, she would talk to the photograph too, she said. As weeks turned into months, it became harder for her to stop the tears and keep herself together for her children. The void of her husband was killing her in parts, till she had reached her threshold: “One night, my son was watching the video [a compilation of Mr. Dar’s photographs and family’s happy moments, together] and he started crying. When I noticed him, I shook him, calling his name, “Ateeb, Ateeb.” He didn’t respond. I couldn’t bear it. I took a knife from the kitchen and slit my forearm.” A few moments later, she was washing the oozing blood under the tap. When she would tell this to her husband later, during a visit to the jail, she would get scolded,“rightly”, she recalled that meeting. But the agony wasn’t just leaving her, she said. In March 2020, her support powerhouse, her father, passed away due to a heart attack. She explained how much her issues troubled her father. “The police killed my father. He would have been alive, with me,” she said, disgustingly. “Now, my mother lives alone in the house with no one to take her care. [The] police is the reason.” Four days after her father’s death, Mr. Dar was released. “It had no meaning. My father won’t come back now,” she said. However, Mr. Dar’s detention has changed him a lot, Ms. Bano said, as her daughter, Aisha keeps nudging. She gives her a napkin that doubles as a toy doll. “[Mr. Dar] has become more caring, but more scared as well,” she said. And she is sacred too, especially at night. “I’m afraid that they’ll come back. When I walk past the police station, I remember everything. Everything,” she said. “That raid in the night.” And so does her husband. But no one talks about it, revealed Ms. Bano. She thinks that it would only make things harder for the family. Though Mr. Dar has rejoined his job as a salesman at a nearby carpenter shop, he hasn’t really moved on. Once, when he was walking past the police station, his son pointed at a bunker, saying, “hadn’t they had locked you up? They used to say that you would be released soon.” Mr. Dar broke down but didn’t speak. The uniformed men are a nightmare for the traumatized family now. When will I be free? It is not just Mr. Dar who is afraid of the uniformed men. Or their vehicles. The 14-year-old Afaan, who wishes to go by his first name, is scared of a Rakshak too. In August 2019, Afaan had been hearing the stories of “detention, police beating, and torture.” So when he saw a police vehicle on the afternoon of 21 August 2019 outside his home in Channapora, Srinagar, he tried running away in a reflex. He couldn’t. “[The police] hit my neck with his gun butt and I felt unconscious,” he recalled. “I opened my eyes inside a lock up.” Afaan said he shared the lockup with sixteen others, the eldest was a 24-year-old stranger. Two days later, he was shifted to Sadar police station in the middle of the night. There, he said, he was called to an isolated cell, where police officers on duty were waiting. “They showed me a video of the protest and asked me to identify the people in it,” Afaan recalled. Initially, the police officials tried to lure him, he said, by offering chips. But, he said, he didn’t break and denied to give up any names. “I didn’t know any of them,” he said. The police soon lost its temper, he said, adding that the Duty Officer asked the other police official to bring a baton. “I was very afraid,” when he recalled the stories of extrajudicial police beating in Kashmir. “They beat me up for seven to eight minutes,” he said. “I kept pleading: “Bas bas D.O. Sahab, lag gayi.” But they didn’t stop.” One of his cousin sisters, who wished to remain anonymous, told that the family had pleaded to the police officials that “Afaan is a child and he has health issues. Even if you beat him up, don’t hit on the face.” Although, Afaan said, knowingly the police officials pulled his ears and slapped him. That evening, when his father came to the police station, he remained mute: “I didn’t tell him. He would have gotten worried.” After 14-days inside the police station, the 14-year-old Afaan was let go by the police when his family showed a certificate from his school that proved him to be a minor. He was named in an FIR--wherein his elder sister claimed the charges included vandalising property and throwing stones at the government forces--and he attended a hearing in the Juvenile Court. However, the COVID-19 impact on daily life has put that case at halt. And the detention changed his life, too, forever, he said. The police have asked Afaan to stay put and report at the earliest on every summon. In other words, Afaan said, the police have chained him. “Jaise mai abhi bhi unke kabze mai hun,” he said. And this idea of accountability drives him uneasy. Hence, he likes to stay away from home; keeps a smartphone without a sim card; stays more at a friend’s place rather than home; and wakes up suddenly at night. On 6 May 2020, when Riyaz Naikoo, the then operational commander of a militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed, the police detained Afaan again. He wasn’t scared of beating anymore, he said, but the fact that his family will have to suffer again. However, he was let go within 24 hours this time. “I’m afraid that they will come back,” he said in a hushed voice. A student of tenth standard, Afaan has been finding it hard to focus on studies, said his cousin sister, who lives in the same house. “There is no future in Kashmir,” Afaan added. “It is not just me. It is every Kashmiri. They have ruined everyone’s future. India ruined it.” Inevitably, Afaan is binded by “the Kashmir issue”, he said. Nothing can emancipate him. But just the one thing: “Resolution of Kashmir issue. When it’ll resolve I’ll be free. Then only I’ll sit at home, in peace.” Stuck in courts On every phone call from the jail, Mr. Raasik wonders if the family was able to move ahead with his PSA’s quashment. But then came the coronavirus and shut the J-K High Court after the government forces’ personnel deployed and multiple employees tested positive for the virus. The COVID-19 has halted the already snail paced hearing of Habeas Corpus petitions. Since 6 August, 2019, more than 600 habeas corpus petitions have been filed before the J-K High Court at Srinagar and till 28 June 2020, “not even 1 percent of such cases have been decided.” In October 2019, Mr. Raasik’s father, Mr. Nengroo had to borrow money to board a bus to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, to meet his son in jail. He went alone because that’s all he could afford. He is yet to repay the debt. “[Raasik’s] mother cannot come,” he said. “She says that she won’t be able to see him behind the bars. It would kill her.” At the jail, Mr. Nengroo said, Mr. Raasik kept saying: “I’m innocent. I’m innocent.” Before coming of age, Mr. Nengroo had been working hard on fields, “dreaming to make my son a big man.” “They ruined his education. What I had dreamt for him, all of it is burnt now,” he said. “All is gone. Now, it is all up to Allah.” Mr. Nengroo’s will is breaking now. After years of his son’s imprisonment, he said, that even if he had committed a mistake worth a penny, he should return home now. But for Ms. Jan, Mr. Raasik’s sister, a long fight remains ahead. Where she needs to be strong, she said. But, sometimes, she steals a few moments to let the sorrow sink in. She locks herself in the bathroom and leaves the tap open to cry out loud, in peace. And wait for her only brother to come back home.
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