KL Report
SRINAGAR
For the mother of Tufial Matoo, a young boy killed in the old city on June 11, 2010, May 7- the mother’s day is the ‘darkest day’ of her life. She is sitting in a desolated room of her two story house located in the old city of Srinagar, narrating the woeful tale of the time that she is spending without 17year old Tufail.
Those scenes still come before my eyes when Tufail was a little kid and I used to feed him with spoon in the garden. He always had new ways to protest against eating meals but I kept on narrating him the tales of fairies for hours to that I he would not remain hungry, She said amid tears, asking us the question that no could perhaps could answer. “Wouldn’t he be hungry in the grave where he is sleeping now?”
“I we continue to console her; she managed to utter few more words. She said that the pain she has to bear every day cannot be explained through the words. “If he would have died the natural death, it would not have been as painful as it is now. I kept on thinking what of he would not have gone for the tuitions that day.” Nothing really can soothe my blighted heart now as I am aware that this pain will remain with me even after I die and till the dooms day, she said, adding that if the involved in Tufail’s killing would have been punished, the pain and grief could have reduced.
Stating that she is not the only one who has lost her son in Kashmir, Tufail’s mother says that the day her husband returns from the court after attending Tufail’s case, she eagerly hopes that justice has arrived. “Four years have passed and nothing really has happened.”
“We want someone to stand for us so that justice is delivered. We want someone to speak for us and help us in holding the persons accountable who took our sons away. If justice would have been given to me, I could have understood that there is someone who cares for the people who have lost everything,” she said as her husband Mohammad Ashraf Matoo continues to calm her. Tufail , the lone child of his parents was Seventeen-year-old Taufail Mattoo was killed by security forces in the Valley on June 11 last year, allegedly after they fired a tear gas canister at him. Tufail’s death led to widespread protests and triggered a summer of unrest in which more than 100 people were killed.
