Mother hopes to get back missing son
Shariq Majeed
Tribune News Service

Azmatabad (Rajouri), March 17
Muhammad Shafiq, who went missing around six years back, may never return and might have died, but all these years not a single moment has passed when his mother Gulzar Begum gave up hope of getting him back.

Gulzar Begum hopes her son, who went missing about six years ago, will return one day.

Shafiq is one among the 27 persons who had gone missing from Rajouri district since 1990's. A majority of the missing persons are teenagers in the age group of 10-15.

For the past six years, Gulzar Begum has been hoping that her son will be back. She is presently taking care of her two sons and a daughter in the absence of her husband Munir Hussain, who is in Saudi Arabia.

Muhammad Shafiq (then 12-year-old), resident of Chakoori in Azmatabad, was a student of class VIII of Government High School here. Even though he was suffering from some psychiatric problem, his family had been providing him best possible medical care with a hope that he will recover soon. While he was responding to the treatment and even showed signs of recovery, on March 23, 2003, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

"He had gone to attend his elder brother's marriage. The last we heard about him was that after having dinner at the bride's house, he was on his way back," Begum said. "Initially, we thought he might have gone to some relative's house. Three days later, we lodged a missing report at Thannamandi police station. Even the police tried its best to locate him, but failed".

Begum, who ruled out that Shafiq might have been lured by militants to join some outfit, said he was timid and would not go out alone at night.

"He was a timid boy and even used to ask me to accompany to bathroom outside. He was a very shy child and wouldn't trust anyone easily," said Begum, who after the disappearance of her son has not been keeping well. "Even though our relatives and neighbours keep on saying that he will not return and might have been killed, I tell them that I will die only after I see him and hope that one day he will be back home".

A senior police officer at Thannamandi said in a majority of the cases where persons had gone missing in the area, they had either crossed over to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for arms training or their whereabouts were not known.