Srinagar, Oct 1, 2019:In Sumbal in Bandipora, North Kashmir . grandson of Zuna Begum, named Mohsin Shahnawaz Ganai, the only one in the family who earned a living as a quarry worker, is no longer at home. Zuna sits in a corner of the staircase, weeping. “I have no one. Shahnawaz used to say, ‘Why do you cry?
I am your son.’ But the soldiers took him.”
Shahnawaz was detained on August 15. He was in the bathroom when an Indian police team barged into their home. His sister Shafia, an undergraduate student of sociology in Sumbal, says the police broke their front door and then the bathroom door. “They went inside the bathroom and thrashed my brother. They would not let him get dressed. They dragged him to their vehicle and beat him again.” She points to window panes which she says the policemen smashed. The glass panes of windows in the living room, bathroom and the house’s entrance are shattered.
Shafia says the family has been unable to get a copy of the first information report from the Sumbhal police station that will serve as documentary proof that Shahnawaz is being held by the police. “When I go to the police station, the Station House Officer tells me ‘I know your family’s condition is not good, that your father and grandmother are not well’. He sends me to the duty officer, who records the daily entries in the station, who informs me that there is no criminal complaint registered about this.”