Sam’eer
Baramulla | Through a small orchard, a dirty track leads to a one storey house on the right bank of a stream that runs through Nathipora in Sopore town in Baramulla district of north Kashmir.
Ghulam Ahmed Wani (50) aimlessly wanders about in the orchard, caressing his long beard. He is bare feet and cares little about any visitors to his house.
Along with my colleagues, I enquire about the family of the girl killed by Rashtriya Rifles, Wani reluctantly opens the front door of his home and shows us to his guest room. His daughter, Mubeena Akhtar, was killed by troopers on the evening of September 20 in 2010 and since, the aging father has not relaxed. Wani sits on the floor and hangs his head.
A long silence breaks when Wani murmurs that Mubeena succeeded in her ‘purpose of life’. Wani goes quiet again. After a while, a young woman enters the room. She introduces herself as Mehbooba – a close friend of Mubeena.
She says that Mubeena spent her last moments with her.
“We were talking to each other outside the house. Mubeena’s mother asked her if she could buy some sweets for her (Mubeena’s) little cousin and we decided to go together to the nearby shop,” says Mehbooba.
On the road ahead, Mehbooba says, some young boys were playing cricket. Soon, vehicles carrying Rashtriya Rifles men passed by and the boys started booing at the army men and raised pro-freedom slogans. “We were watching this whole thing from main gate of our house. We were waiting for army men to leave so that we could safely go and buy snacks. But they stopped their vehicle some 200 feet away from the shop and got down,” she said.
“There was tension but then we thought we would return soon and safely. It was when the two were walking towards the shop that Rashtriya Rifles men fired at them. “I heard the gunfire and then loud screams – Ya Allah. On my left, Mubeena was lying in a pool of blood. I screamed and screamed to tell people that Mubeena was hit by a bullet,” she says.
Like other killings in 2010, this one too was followed by protests.
“We tried to rush her to the hospital in a vehicle, but the army men stopped us. They were insisting that we should blame the militants for the attack. We did not relent and they made us wait with Mubeena bleeding in the vehicle,” she says. “We were allowed to go only after the protests became bigger and louder.”Mehbooba adds Mubeena breathed her last at Narbal, where they had another 15 kilometres to go before they reached the Srinagar Hospital.
Wani, a religious preacher, filed FIR number 493/2010 after Mubeena’s killing. He says that no criminal proceedings have followed. “I have no faith in the so called justice system now,” he adds.
Wani is now speaking to us again. “We rushed her to Srinagar hospital. But doctors said she was dead,” he says. “Had we not been stopped by the army, she might have lived?”
“We have no hope of justice from this government. We have neither received any compensation nor do we beg for it.” Wani thinks that his daughter fulfilled a purpose when she succumbed to bullets. “She has laid her life for a cause, like thousands of other men and women in Kashmir. I will whole heartedly support the freedom struggle even if have to sacrifice my whole family for the freedom struggle,” Wani says.