Feature: Funeral held in absentia highlights "enforced disappearance" issue in Kashmir

A family in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Tuesday ended their agonizing 14-year-long search to trace a dear family member and held funeral prayers in absentia for him.

The prayers, the first such memorial held in the region for a missing person, brought an end to the family's ordeal and provided an important sense of closure for them.

The Dar family, residing in the Rawalpora locality of Srinagar city, home to the summer capital Srinagar of Jammu and Kashmir, had invited people including its friends, relatives and neighbors to participate in the funeral prayers. Hundreds of people, mostly residents, gathered at a school ground in the neighborhood to offer the prayers in absentia for Manzoor Ahmad Dar.

"It took our family around two months to finally decide that we should organize funeral prayers for my father," Bilqees Manzoor, daughter of Dar told local media. "Our hopes about his survival were dashed after the police submitted a report to court during November last year presuming my dad was deceased."

A chemist by profession, Dar, according to the family, was picked up by the Indian military from his residence during the night on January 18, in 2002, and subsequently forced to "disappear."

Police had registered a case of abduction against the Indian army and named an officer, Major Kishore Malhotra, as one of the accused in the case.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of police in Indian-controlled Kashmir probing the case, concluded the likelihood was that Dar could have been killed and his body disposed off.

The court, following the SIT's report, ordered the arrest of Malhotra in the case, but the officer saw a stay of proceedings, meaning a temporarily halt to the judicial proceeding through the order of the court, granted by the Supreme Court of India.

The local government has already filed its reply to the Supreme Court to the petition of Malhotra.

However, the Dar family has vowed to continue their legal battle in the courts in their plight to find the grave of the beloved Manzoor Ahmad Dar.

"We only presume him dead but will not give up our struggle to search for his grave and see that the culprits are rightfully punished," Manzoor said. "We want to see all the accused in our father's killing behind bars."

Meanwhile, the apex court on Tuesday asked the widow of Dar to file a reply to the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by Malhotra against his arrest, ordered by the region's high Court.

The phenomenon of enforced disappearances started in 1990, immediately after insurgency challenging New Delhi's rule broke out in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Rights groups say more than 8,000 people were subjected to enforced disappearances in the restive region so far. However, the local government has always contested the numbers.

Khurram Parvez, a leading rights activist in the region describes the family's actions as seeking "emotional closure" to their case, but says the government has to come clean on the saga of disappearances in the region and prosecute the indicted armed forces personnel responsible.

"I think it is understandable that some families want to go ahead with initiatives for emotional closure but for the actual closure of each case of enforced disappearance, the prosecution of the alleged perpetrators is essential, along with the return of the remains of the deceased," Parvez told Xinhua.

"Besides the case of Manzoor Ahmad Dar, there are many other cases where investigations have indicted the armed forces personnel but the government has not once

succeeded in translating these indictments into prosecution and the reason for that is an institutional cover up through shoddy investigations," Parvez maintained.

Last month three men mysteriously went missing from the frontier Kupwara district, about 120 km northwest of Srinagar.

Families of the missing men blamed the Indian military for the trio's forcible disappearance and said they were taken away by a trooper belonging to the Territorial Army.

The Indian military also ordered a probe into the disappearance of the three men.

Indian-controlled Kashmir is considered to be one of the most militarized regions in world. Officially India does not reveal the actual number of its troops deployed in Kashmir. Enditem