A newsroom’s panic over an unresponsive colleague turns into profound relief as police, firefighters, and journalists unite to find him safe, more than two hours after the door opened, writes Masood Hussain
Late on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, I was asked to deliver a lecture on the evolution and implementation of gender budgeting in Jammu and Kashmir at a training programme. With no escape and little time, I buried myself in data, trying to untangle a debate that continues to oscillate between feminism and women’s empowerment. Half the night dissolved into the glare of my laptop screen. Fajr arrived too soon, breakfast preparations followed, and by 9:15 am, I was rushing towards Lal Chowk in a Sumo.
That is when the call came.
“Sir, there is a problem,” said Umaima, the youngest member of the Kashmir Life newsroom. Her voice trembled. “Rameez reached the office at 8:30 am, but Shahid is not opening the door. He is not responding to calls, doorbells, bangs, nothing, sir. Rameez even threw pebbles at the windows.”
My heart froze.
Rameez, who travels from Ganderbal at dawn, always arrives early. Shahid, our audio-visual editor for the past five months, had recently moved out of the University of Kashmir hostel after completing his master’s in journalism. In transit and without a home yet, he slept in the office. Many newspaper offices in Kashmir remain semi-residential because, historically, late-night travel has never been safe.
I panicked. I called Shuaib, our general manager, who usually takes a quick nap after Fajr. Fortunately, he was awake. “Do not attempt to open the door without informing the police,” I warned. He already knew something was wrong. I called his assistant, Fayaz, next. He, too, had heard, but he assumed Shahid was simply asleep.
By the time I ran from Cargo Sumo Stand to Pratap Park, my worst fears had taken hold. What I stepped into felt chillingly close to a crime scene.
Shuaib was already speaking to officers from Kothi Bagh Police Station, who had responded with commendable urgency. They gathered details about Shahid, his family in Rafiabad, his health, and his background. They examined the heavy iron door, which had been installed years earlier on police advice after a fifth columnist brought a group of rioters from Maisuma who attacked the office.
“Even if we wanted to, we cannot break this door,” a policeman told me. “We need other options.”
As they consulted seniors, it was decided to summon the Fire and Emergency Services. Their equipment and tall ladders could give access to the second floor.
“What do you think the situation might be?” one police officer murmured to another as more personnel arrived. Teams from intelligence and other wings joined in. Journalists from neighbouring organisations gathered outside, sensing something grave.
“This man has been banging the doors for two hours,” another officer said, referring to Rameez. “We must be ready for the worst. FSL teams and crime section photographers may be needed.”
By then, rumours began swirling through Srinagar’s fast-moving social media circles. I pleaded with one of Srinagar’s ‘Facebook Brigade’, not to spread anything. “No, sir, I would not,” he said, but I knew too well how this parallel universe works. Maleeha had started getting calls from colleagues in other organisations. “What has happened in Kashmir Life,” she remembers, one colleague asking her on the phone. “We have been told to get ready for a newsbreak.”
Officials began recording statements. I was identified as the promoter, and the questioning started gently but firmly. One police team coordinated with other members of the newsroom, who by then had reached Srinagar’s Fleet Street; another compiled Shahid’s details. A third examined possibilities of accessing the office through the windows. Ever organised, Shuaib handed over all of Shahid’s details along with his identity papers, ensuring the police could continue their work without delay.
Then I saw two figures running towards me: Khursheed, an academic, my shadow for 35 years, and Maleeha Sofi, the Kashmir Life online editor. Maleeha looked as if she might collapse. The younger generation, I realised, is too fragile for scenes like this. She needed reassurance, yet her eyes carried a pleading hope: Maybe he is alive. Maybe this will end well.
But inside myself, I was drowning. I called home and briefly explained the situation I had walked into. The panic, by then, had become unavoidable.
The thought that I might once again have to take that familiar North Kashmir route, one I have travelled a thousand times for all the wrong reasons: Kupwara, Handwara, Trehgam, Karnah, Lolab, Uri, Sopore, Baramulla, Pattan, and now this time to Rafiabad, Shahid’s home, was dreadful.
The thought that I might have to take home a young man’s body to his parents, already stricken by illness, was unbearable. Shahid had arrived from the classroom in the newsroom barely months ago. It had taken the newsroom a few months to ease him out of his typical Kashmiri ‘bridal reticence’. Now, the team was trying to rewrite his mental hard drive and untangle the classroom wiring that bears little relevance to the media landscape that has transformed since mass communication began to be taught in Naseem Bagh.
What would I tell his father, who had survived a heart attack only weeks earlier and was still in therapy to regain his speech?
In my darkest corner of fear, other possibilities clawed at me. What if he had taken his own life? What if he struggled with something none of us knew? Investigations, questions, suspicion, every tragedy spirals into a thousand accusations in Kashmir’s delicate media world.
I messaged on our internal group: “Rush to the office.”
Shuaib Nazir sprinted from home without washing his face. Umaima cried the entire way in her cab. In Poonch town, Shadab and Umar Dar were in the midst of a conversation with historian K D Mani when they stopped abruptly, desperate to know what was happening. Babara worried investigators would ask who had argued with him last. “As coordinating editor, I had had a few disagreements recently,” she later admitted. “And I kept thinking, how will I explain this?”
Inside the tension, a small team led by Inspector Adil, the smart Station House Officer of Sherghari police station, prepared for one last attempt. The firemen stood ready with ladders. The police steadied themselves. Adil walked to the iron door, pressed the doorbell once more, and struck it, firmly but not violently.
There was silence.
Then, there was movement.
The door opened.
Shahid appeared, half asleep, bewildered. “Kya baat hai?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. The shock of seeing police and firemen jolted him fully awake.
“When I saw your face,” he later told me, “I realised nothing was fine.” Later, he said, he slept at 6 am and had no idea that he had slept too long.
The officers rushed in, confirmed he was safe, and relayed the relief to their seniors. One official looked ready to shout, but I gently intervened, wrapping my arms around Shahid in utter gratitude. It was as though we had been given a second birthday for him.
It took the next half hour to thank the police, fire officials, and all others who responded with empathy and speed. They understood our panic. They treated us with courtesy.
To all of them, we owe a heartfelt thanks for helping the Kashmir Life newsroom celebrate the rebirth of a young journalist who still has miles to go.
Long live Shahid—and please, dear boy, keep your ears open, even if your eyes are shut. Journalists cannot switch off their eyes or ears. Keep that in mind. That is the dictum that the newsrooms have trained us for. This is seismic Zone V, in the real world and in the metaphorical one.
Post Script
For the next 150 minutes after the ‘crisis’, I held an extended conversation with senior college teachers, higher education managers and middle-rung policy implementation staff to discuss the evolution of gender budgeting and the immediate outcomes of public expenditure on ideas once dismissed as utopian at the end of the last century. I gave them far less than what they gave me in return.
