BELLOW, India (AP) – On a recent cold winter day in India-controlled Kashmir, Mushtaq Ahmed dug the earth, laboriously digging a hole for his teenage son. There was, however, no body to be lowered into.
Stunned, a group of spectators watched in silence. But Ahmed kept digging, now with his right foot in the half-dug pit.
Then he got up, straightening his back, and faced the crowd, enraged.
“I want my son’s body,” he howled. “I ask India to return my son’s corpse to me.”
Police said government forces shot Ahmed’s 16-year-old son Athar Mushtaq and two other young men when the men refused to surrender on the outskirts of Srinagar on December 30. They described the men as “radical associates of terrorists” opposed to Indian rule.
The men’s families insist they were not militants and were killed in cold blood. There was no way to independently confirm any of the statements.
“It was a false encounter,” shouted a sad Ahmed, as the crowd gathering around him in the cemetery south of the village of Bellow shouted slogans demanding justice.
Authorities buried them in a remote cemetery 115 kilometers (70 miles) from their ancestral villages.
Under a policy initiated in 2020, Indian authorities buried dozens of Kashmir rebels in unidentified graves, denying funerals suitable for their families. The policy increased widespread anger against India in the disputed region.
India has long relied on military force to maintain control over the part of Kashmir it administers. He has waged two wars across the region with Pakistan, which also claims mountainous territory. An armed uprising since 1989 against Indian control and the subsequent crackdown on Indians has killed tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces.
In August 2019, India revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, restricted curfews and blackouts and arrested thousands, sparking outrage and economic ruin. Since then, authorities have brought a series of laws and implemented policies that residents and critics see as part of India’s colonist colonialism project in the volatile region.
For years, Kashmiris have accused Indian troops of targeting civilians and abusing power with complete impunity. The troops were accused of organizing shootings and saying the victims were militants to claim rewards and promotions.
Athar’s death came months after a rare admission of wrongdoing by the Indian military, who admitted that soldiers had exceeded their legal powers in the killing of three local men who were initially described as Pakistani terrorists. The police concluded that an Indian army officer and two civilian “army sources” killed the three workers “after removing them from their identities and marking them as radical terrorists”. The officer was charged with murder.
Kashmiris’ fear and anger over these incidents were exacerbated by the new policy of not identifying the dead or their associates and refusing to return the bodies to their families.
Officials say the policy aims to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but human rights activists and residents say it is an attempt by the government to avoid major funerals that fuel more resentment against India.
Police inspector general Vijay Kumar said in a recent interview with The Hindu that the policy “has not only stopped the spread of COVID infections, but has also stopped extolling terrorists and has avoided potential problems of law and order.”
The authorities, however, did not stop state-sponsored funerals for government forces killed in combat with the rebels.
“Not returning the bodies of the dead is a humiliation for humanity,” said Zareef Ahmed Zareef, a civil rights activist and prominent Kashmir poet.
Disturbed families of militants and civilians killed by government forces have repeatedly demanded that Indian authorities, who are predominantly Hindus, allow for final rituals and proper burials in ancestral villages under the Muslim faith. The pleas have been repeatedly denied. Families sometimes discreetly visit remote cemeteries and mark the graves of their relatives with stones and scribble their names with brushes.
Until last April, Indian forces handed over the bodies of the rebels to their relatives for burial. Since then, according to the police, 158 militants have been buried in isolated locations.
Athar’s body was the last denied to relatives last year. On December 30, when Ahmed received news of his son’s death, he rushed to a police facility in Srinagar where Athar’s body was being kept. Later, when the police transported the body, along with those of the other two men, to a remote mountain for burial, Ahmed followed him.
Along the way, he was stopped several times, but begged Indian forces to let him see his son’s face one last time, he said. When he finally arrived at the burial site, he was devastated.
Ahmed said the graves were dug by an excavator, contrary to traditional practice where they are dug with shovels and usually marked with marble headstones.
“They were not graves, but hurriedly dug,” he said. “I lowered my son into that hole myself.”
Human rights experts and activists say that refusing to return bodies to families is a crime.
“It is a total violation of international law and against the Geneva Conventions,” said Parvez Imroz, a prominent human rights lawyer. “This is even against local laws.”
The assassination of Athar and his remote burial sparked public mourning, with thousands demanding “return the bodies” on social media.
In his family’s simple house in Bellow, the mourners surrounded Athar’s mourning mother. Her sister shouted, “Mother, be patient. He will come back. He promised me that he will. “
In the cemetery, the grave that Ahmed dug for his son remained empty.
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Saaliq and Hussain reported from New Delhi.