“Who in 2008 and 2010 wasn’t on roads?” asks Mudasir, “why aren’t all detained, why isn’t challan presented against all of them, why aren’t they asked to waste their time in these court proceedings. Why this pick and choose?”
All of them were detained for different periods and were kept at different places. Four of them were detained under PSA.
Aqeel, 21, was also contacted on his mobile phone and was called to a local police station. “I was told to come and meet the SSP. Who among us, in Kashmir, has guts to say no to a policeman? I had to be there and from there I was arrested,” he says.
Aqeel was kept there for three days, then shifted to Cargo, a feared interrogation center, for few months and then to a jail in Kathua. He was detained for eight months under PSA.
Aqeel and other twelve in this group have painful memories of their detention, especially of Kotbalwal and Cargo.
“Yahan murday bhi boltay hai (Even the dead speak here)” is a line that all the detainees who have been to Cargo remember having seen written on one of its walls. This they use to describe their experience in there.
All of them say that they were beaten up so badly that they had agreed to all the accusations police had made against them. “Agreeing to all accusations was an easy option to be alive,” they say in unison, denying the charges.
Aqeel was born in 1990. He says while interrogation he was asked if he burnt a police jeep in 1988? And his answer was yes!
“When they asked this question almost five policemen were jumping over a heavy rod placed on my thighs. A yes was a very easy escape then,” Aqeel says.
While they were recalling their painful days spent inside Cargo, their lawyer intervened, it is 12.30 pm, he says, “let us get in (courtroom) and check what happens”. The eleven boys follow him with their heads down and hands behind, very humbly.
On stepping into the silence of the court room again the darbaan called out their names. Ilyas V/s Sta…te. They stood in a line and the judge asked, are all present? The lawyer replied, “Yes sir all who are out on bail are present but the two, Ilyas and Harris, who are under detention aren’t here sir. Police didn’t get them sir”.
“They will be getting some detainees from Central Jail today, let us wait if Ilyas and Harris are here too”, says the judge, “for now go and wait outside”.
Saqib looks worried. He makes a call home and tells them to wait for some more time. His baby girl is not well and has to take her to a doctor.
Saqib is a 30-year-old goldsmith who was detained by one of his SHO friends who owed him Rs 80,000 for the gold the policeman had purchased from him, he alleges. “He still hasn’t paid me up and I too haven’t asked for it. I just hate him now,” he says with a disgusted look on his face. He turns his face away and takes a hard puff off his cigarette.
These eleven boys have eleven different stories of how they were picked up by the police but the most interesting one according to them is of 38-year-old Murtaza, an auto rickshaw driver.
“Ye aus panun rasook badawaan poilcus manz magar amis gayee tim tote agaadi (He was trying all the time to earn influence among the policemen, but they still went after him)”, says the youngest of these detainees Aqeel, laughing aloud.
Murtaza is a father of two, a son and a daughter. During the 2010 unrest when Kashmir was under curfew for weeks together, Murtaza was a part of his local masjid’s relief committee helping locals by supplying necessary eatables including to policemen on humanitarian basis, he says.
In this newly established friendship once a policeman boarded his auto and when Murtaza asked for a fare, the policeman refused to pay. This disagreement turned into a heated debate, and the policeman warned him of bitter consequences. Later, after few days he was called to a nearby police station and was detained for 10 days.
