SRINAGAR: Another mother dies waiting for her son.
Hussina Begam passed away on 5th October 2013 without fulfilling her last wish to see her beloved son, Syed Anwar Shah, who had disappeared nearly 14 years back.
According to Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) Anwar was picked up and subject to enforced disappearance by the Security forces on 21st July 2000 from Srinagar.
In early 70’s Late Zaman Shah along with her wife, Hussina Begum, and two sons had migrated to Srinagar from village Vilgam, Dolipora of Tehsil Handwara in Kupwara District, in search of job to earn livelihood for their family. Late Zaman Shah worked as Chowkidar (Watchman) at several places in Srinagar before he passed away in the year 1992. After his death the family did not return back to their native village. Instead both their sons started working in Srinagar.
The younger son, Syed Anwar Shah initially started working as auto rickshaw driver and later worked as a painter. He got married in the year 1998 and became father of a baby girl a year later. On 21st July 2000, Anwar left for work from his rented residence at Fateh Kadal, Srinagar but never returned back. The family had lodged a missing report in Police Station Fateh Kadal in this regard. Besides, the family also filed a case in the court and pursued it with the state authorities, however, nothing has come their way. Earlier they were informed by the authorities that the victim has been lodged in a jail in Jammu, however they could not trace him there.
Since last 13 years Hussina Begum and her family, which include her handicapped son and the half-widow & daughter of the victim, had been struggling to know the whereabouts of Syed Anwar Shah. While the family of Anwar was making all out efforts to know his whereabouts, a piece of land belonging to the family, their only asset, at their ancestral village at Vilgam, Dolipora (Handwara), was encroached and grabbed by some influential people in the village, rendering the family landless. The family is still living in a rented accommodation in Srinagar.
The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) has condoled the death of Hussina Begum and pledged to take her struggle, to know the whereabouts of her son, to its logical end, an APDP press statement said.
APDP has demanded that the impunity being provided to the Security Forces be immediately revoked, besides making them accountable for all the gross human rights violations they commit. The statement further reads: The impunity, on one hand, gives free hand to the Security Forces to kill, disappear, torture and rape the innocent people, and, on the other hand, the lack of accountability is used to suppress the people and to deny justice to them, besides giving arduous lives and agonizing death to the families of victims like Hussina Begum.
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