A SHOVEL and a spade in hand, he units out from his two-storeyed home. Depending on what he final heard, he chooses a spot and begins digging.
Manzoor Ahmad Wagay has been digging the earth for the previous eight months now. What he hopes to seek out at some point is his son’s physique — the son who would have been 25 years previous in just a few days.
On August 2 final yr, Territorial Army soldier Rifleman Shakir Manzoor was travelling between the Balpora and Bahibagh military camps in Shopian space. Since it was Eid day, he stopped to have lunch along with his household on the way in which again and left residence at 5 pm.
“That is the last time I saw him,” says his father, 56.
The final time anybody heard from Shakir was about half-an- hour later, when he known as the household and mentioned he had run into some mates and that they need to not fear if his officers known as to ask his whereabouts.
“I think he had been kidnapped already and he just wanted to talk to us one last time,” says Wagay.
Hours later that day, Shakir’s charred car was recovered from a area within the neighbouring Kulgam district, about 16 km from his village.
About seven days later, his garments have been present in a ditch 3 km from the home. Wagay breaks down as he holds out a pair of beige trousers and a brown shirt lined with dried blood and dirt. A chunk of the shirt was discovered contained in the burnt car as effectively which, the household believes, may have been torn within the scuffle of the kidnapping.
Every week after the killing, an audio clip circulated on social media made unverified claims that “the soldier’s killing and denial of his body to his family was retribution for a similar policy adopted by J&K authorities for militants killed in encounters”.
On the information, Shakir stays lacking. Amritpal Singh, Superintendent of Police (Shopian), says the “case is under investigation and efforts are on to trace the body”.
Wagay is satisfied that his son has been killed. “A woman had seen about four men torturing him. Given that and the blood on his clothes, I don’t think he could have survived,” he says.
Every different day since then, the daddy would hear a couple of sighting from days in the past and take his shovel and head over. At first, native residents would help in his search. But in an space lined with orchards so far as the attention can see, it has been an ordeal.
Shakir was born to Wagay and Ayesha after 4 daughters. He was the one one with a job and helped out the household after becoming a member of the Territorial Army in 2016, though, the household says, he wished to change into a physician.
Today, the search has left the household in extreme monetary pressure that has additionally led to Shakir’s youthful brother Shaan (20) dropping out of school in Aligarh. Shaan’s cellphone is filled with pictures along with his older brother together with one from final Eid, in the identical garments they later recovered from the ditch. It was Shaan who first raised the alarm after Shakir’s cellphone was discovered switched off.
“At some point, we heard that an arrested militant had told authorities that they had buried him next to a canal. So we hired a JCB machine and started looking for his body near every water body we could see,” Shaan says.
“Police record him as missing. If the search had been conducted more thoroughly in those first few hours, maybe we could have found his body, since he was not killed for at least the first three days,” Wagay says.
Of the 4 militants suspected of getting kidnapped him, Wagay says he has visited the households of three to ask them the place his son has been buried. “They just say that they are not involved,” he says.
The father searches for hours day by day and returns to a distraught household. He has now widened his search via the three districts round his village. “I just want to be able to bury my son. Bas hamein yeh tasalli hogi ki woh sukoon se dafn hain (We will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he is buried in peace).”
Looking again as soon as extra, he can’t assist however add: “The best apple in the orchard is the one that gets pecked by the birds.”
