Photo Feature

A Photo feature by Altaf Qadri

Enforced disappearance is one of the most harrowing consequences of the armed conflict in Kashmir. During the last 18 years of conflict, the Association Of Parents Of Disappeared Persons (APDP), an organisation of the relatives of people who have disappeared after custody, claim more than 10,000 people have been subject to enforced disappearance by state agencies and were mostly picked up by the troops. Of the disappeared persons, between 2000-2005 a majority were married males. Although men have mostly been subject to disappearances women have also been adversely affected because of being related to them as daughters, mothers, sisters and wives.

Mughli who doesn't remember her age is among thousands of Kashmiri women whose young sons were subjected to enforced disappearences in Kashmir. Her only son Nazir Ahmad Teli, a teacher by profession, had left for school in 1991. She never saw him again - and Mughli became one of the first members of a tragic club of several thousand women whose young sons or husbands have disappeared, the majority of them after being picked up by police or security forces.

Since then she has been to every single police station and army camp to trace out her only son. This story of the return of a missing man seems to be just a dream of of a desperate mother who wants her missing son to return alive.