I will not carry a gun… I’ll carry your books, I’ll carry a torch, I’ll carry a tune, I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward …. What else can a father say who has lost his son by an ‘error’ made by the State Board of Technical Education.
Struggling to control his tears, Hilal Ahmad Gilkar, a resident of Sheikh-ul-Alam Colony in Nowgam narrates the story of his son’s death by saying that last winter he dropped his son at Masterpro Institute of Technology on a cold morning. He did not know that this day would be etched forever in his memory for all the wrong reasons.
”When Adnan returned in the evening, he informed me that he did well in Physics paper, but due to the unavailability of continuation sheet, he had to write the rest of the answers on another sheet,”the aged father shares with a gloomy face.
Unaware of their fate, a pall of gloom descended on the family this year on June 18 when Mohammad Adnan, a first semester student of a electronic engineering at KG Polytechnic in Srinagar, went missing after his results were declared. He had failed in Physics.
The family got worried about their son and published a missing reports in local newspaper, asking him to come back home. A sit-in was also held at press enclave by the students of Polytechnic appealing police to speed up the investigation.
After a week, the body of Adnan was fished out from river Jehlum in Parimpora, nearly 7km away from their home.
Who was Adnan?
Everyone remembers Adnan as a football enthusiast, as an energetic, jolly and talkative young man. His friends enjoyed his company until the last day of his life when he committed suicide by jumping off from foot bridge in Lal Chowk.
Adnan wanted to become an engineer and was too good in Physics, his father says.
”I once met one of his teachers in the college who told me that Adnan speaks of higher concepts of Physics. They told me that we should send him to IIT OR NIT and this course was not fit for him,”Hilal says.
Family holds the system responsible for Adnan’s death
After the death of Adnan, his father filed the revaluation and after three months, the results came to his knowledge. The father was pushed further into grief when Adnan was declared pass, only he was not himself there anymore to rejoice the result.
Restless and filled with grief of losing a son to an ‘error’, Hilal Ahmad holds the system responsible for his son’s demise.
”No one, Not even the state technical board , will own the responsibility for Adnan’s death,” he concludes