Missing Persons Case
It took ten long years for police to file a report 
Shariq Majeed
Tribune News Service

Mora Katha-Kotdhara (Rajouri), July 25
Three civilians were taken into custody by Army men in 1997 but it took the police ten years to register a case. By rule, the police is expected to file a missing persons report within 24 hours of being informed about a case.
Abdul Aziz, son of Sher Muhammad, Abdul Aziz, son of Muhammad Hussain, and Muhammad Yousuf, son of Raj Muhammad were picked up by men of the 18 Dogra Regiment from their residences. They never came back.
Their families say they tried tried to lodge a missing persons report a few days after they failed to trace the three men.
The families of the three men waged a grim battle for justice for a decade, which saw court interventions too, but the police continued to slumber over what has been termed by the State Human Rights Commission as a gross violation of human rights.
The police, they alleged, was reluctant to take on the Army and attempted to dissuade them from not filing a report.
Baggo Begum, wife of one of the victims, Muhammad Yousuf, remembers how they visited the police station in Rajouri only to be abused by the police personnel and told to go back.
“However,’’ she said, “we didn’t give up and continued to go to the police station. We were often terrorised by Army personnel in plain clothes on the way”, she said. Nothing moved.
Slowly, the stress beagn to take a toll on her two young sons. “Unable to comprehend the disappearance of their father, my sons suffered so much that they have become abnormal in their behaviour,’’ Baggo said.
Muhammad Farooq, brother of Abdul Aziz, who was allegedly killed in a fake encounter, said he read a news item regarding the Ganderbal fake encounter last year.
That triggered hope. “The very next day, we filed a application in the deputy commissioner’s office for exhumation of the bodies of our family members since a source told us that, after killing our relatives, the Army had buried them in pits near Kancha post in Peer Badeswar area.”
The DC referred the case to SSP Farooq Khan who, after much dilly-dallying, asked the SHO to register a missing persons report.
“That was March 29, 2007, a decade after the three men were done away with,’’he said.
Rajouri SSP Rajesh Kumar told The Tribune that he doesn’t know about the matter. “The report was not filed during my time, so I don’t know anything about it” was all that he had to say.