Jammu & Kashmir: 24 years on, a mother still awaits her son picked up by the Army

Srinagar: More than two-and-a-half decades ago as Kashmir Valley was burning and its people were caught in the crossfire between security forces on one side and terrorists on the other, another crisis was beginning to fuel the fire.

With the Indian government going all out to crush terror groups at any cost, the security forces including the Army had been given a free hand to employ all the methods required to silence the guns. Even as thousands of Kashmiri youngsters had taken to violence, the armed forced too came down with all their might to neutralize them and in the process took recourse to methods which can at the very least be called unlawful and Draconian.

As pressure mounted on troops involved in counter-insurgency operations to show results, they started to allegedly target even those who had no connection with any terror groups. Several youngsters were simply picked up by the armed forces on the pretext of being involved in terror activities or helping the insurgents and then nothing was ever heard about them. It seems that they never existed and such cases have come to be known as "enforced disappearance" in Jammu and Kashmir.

Although the first case of "enforced disappearance" was reported in the late 1970s, such incidents became very common after 1989 and till date several thousand people have gone missing leaving behind broken families and shattered relatives who have been running from pillar to post to trace them.

One such case is of Javed Ahmad, the son of Parveena Ahangar. Javed Ahmad has been missing since August 18, 1990.

Parveena later founded the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Kashmir to bring on one platform all those who relatives were arrested, detained or simply picked up during crackdowns by security forces and then disappeared.

Javed Ahmad was just 17 years old and had passed his class 10 examination when the Indian Army arrested him on August 18, 1990 from Batmaloo in Srinagar. Javed Ahmad was allegedly arrested in a case of mistaken identity as the Army was looking for a terrorist by the name of Javed Ahmad Bhat. But according to Parveena and APDP workers, Javed Ahmad was arrested even as the informer told the troops that he is not a terrorist.