| Young man's story (Must See)
Javed, 17, had just started college. On Aug. 18, 1990, he spent the night at a neighbor's house after studying there. Early that morning, the neighbors woke up Ahanger and told her that her boy was gone.
Neighbors said the security forces came looking for a known militant who lived nearby, Ahanger said. The security forces, hearing her son's name, took him instead.
She said she went to the police station, where she was told Javed had been beaten and taken to the military hospital. She visited the hospital three times but was not allowed to see Javed. Ahanger was told no one knew where her son was, that she would have to go to court.
Since then, she has visited every jail she could find. She is still going to court hearings. Once, a lower court found that security forces were responsible for taking her son, but higher courts did not.
Ahanger said that outside one court hearing security force lawyers offered her about $31,000 to drop the case.
"I said, `I refuse to take your money. I need my son. If he is dead, tell me where he is buried. If he is alive, he is not a militant, and you should release him,'" Ahanger said.
In more than 70 cases, the courts have indicted security forces for wrongly taking people, said Pervez Imroz, a lawyer who also helped found the parents' association and who runs the Public Commission on Human Rights in Kashmir. No security officer has ever been punished, Imroz said. |
