Later, No Justice gust Detainees Yashraj Sharma @YashJournals F or the last Eid, 24-year-old Ruby Jan had brought a checked-shirt for her elder brother, Raasik Nengroo. However, just weeks before Eid, the police detained Mr. Nengroo, yet again, on 6 August 2019, a day after Jammu and Kashmir special status was abrogated. Ms. Jan wandered door to door, begging officials to get her brother released but to no avail. Her father, Bashir Nengroo, a 50-year-old laborer, ran behind the Station House Officer of Yaripora, Kulgam, begging. “He has been at home only for a month,” he told the police. “Why are you taking him again?” However, the police told the family that it was a precautionary detention for 15 August, the independence day. “He’ll be released soon.” Today, a year has passed and two Eids have gone by but the shirt remains packed in the plastic it came in -- reduced to a souvenir. Ms. Jan lives one week at a time. Every Friday, Mr. Nengroo calls home from the jail in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, for a five minute long conversation allowed to him each week. “He asks about mumma and if we all are doing fine,” said Ms. Jan, adding that the phone signal is always weak. But then, there are Fridays when the phone doesn’t ring for a reason or another. “My mother is suffering a lot. She gets unnerved when he misses a call,” she said, breaking down as she spoke with this reporter over the phone. “It has been so long he isn’t at home. Just so long.” On 5 August, the Government of India tabled a bill to reorganize the state of Jammu and Kashmir and scrap the region’s limited autonomy granted under Article 370 of the constitution. Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said: “[Article 370] was used to anger the youth and separate the youth from the mainstream.” Contrary to that, as the parliament voted for the bill in sessions, the J-K administration detained thousands of young boys and men, including students, prominent politicians, rights activists, and lawyers, fearing widespread protests against the move. Kashmir simmered behind the communication blackout as civil liberties were torn apart by the razor wire barricading every other street. Nearly 60 kilometers away from the capital city of Srinagar, the police raided a small hamlet near Yaripora village of Kulgam district in the south, to detain then 29-year-old Mr. Nengroo, at midnight. Mr. Raasik’s detention was based on two earlier FIRs from 2017 and 2018, said Mukhtar Makroo, his advocate. The family bailed him out in July 2019. A month later, he was slapped with the Public Safety Act (PSA), and flown out of Kashmir Valley. In October 2019, an [Raasik’s] mother cannot come. She says that she won’t be able to see him behind the bars. It would kill her. They ruined his education. What I had dreamt for him, all of it is burnt now. All is gone. Now, it is all up to Allah.” 11-member team comprising advocates, human rights activists and a psychiatrist filed a report after their week-long visit. It claimed “more than 13,000 people have been unlawfully detained and most of them are being transferred outside Jammu and Kashmir, in order to prevent family members and advocates from appearing for them.” Mr. Raasik’s absence is visible in every aspect of the family, including financial. After his detention in 2017, the situation at his home started deteriorating. His aged father, who limps, had to restart working as a daily wage laborer to meet the ends. Ms. Jan, the sister, too had to leave her ambitions and nursing midway to support the family, emotionally and financially. But the Nengroo family isn’t alone. Bigger battles On the intervening night of 4 and 5 August, Shehzada Bano had returned to sleep after taking her ill 3-year-old daughter to the hospital with her 30-year-old husband, Bilal Ahmad Dar. As they fell asleep in a 8 x 8 kitchen-cum-bedroom in Fateh Kadal area of Srinagar, abrupt knocks on the window woke her up. It was the police, looking for Mr. Dar. Mr. Dar had a police case against him from the 2008 civilian uprising, in which at least sixty civilians were killed in street protests by the government forces. However, the case was long closed and he had settled down with his wife, and had two children with her. In the preventive detention spree, barely a history sheeter was spared. As the police dragged Mr. Dar from his bed, Ms. Bano kneeled and begged them: “Please think about us. I have two small children to look after. What am I going to do?” None of the pleas were heard as the police whisked her husband away -- children still asleep. The Fateh Kadal police station was barely a kilometre away. From the next morning, she would walk down to the station with a child holding each hand, she said. Even that Eid, in 2019, she waited till 8 pm, she said. “They didn’t allow us to meet him until my daughter started crying on the road: ‘Baba! Baba!’” When Mr. Dar was later shifted to Central Jail, Srinagar, the journey to see him became more tedious. Public transport was not allowed as the restrictions on civilian movement continued. But she had bigger battles to fight: taking children to the hospital at night; feeding them warm food; paying tuition fees of the 7-year-old son;
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