Zafar Aafaq
SRINAGAR
Two former namesake renegades were at the heart of a protest in Srinagar this weekend. Kupwara’s Rashid Khan and Sonawari’s Rashid Billa surfaced in Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP)’s protest during the ongoing global disappearance week on Saturday.
Carrying placards and banners displaying faces of the Rashid duo, the protesters—traditionally seeking the whereabouts of their disappeared ones—for the day sought the action against the former government militia commanders.
The protestors said that Rashid Khan is responsible for extortion, torture, enforced disappearances and killings in Kupwara while as Rashid Billa stands accused for Sadrakoot massacre.
Making a semicircle around a big canvas with an image symbolising a disappeared person on it, the protesters demanded swift action against the duo. The canvas carried the names of all disappeared persons.
One of the protestors, Raja Begum, 45, mother of five girls, hailing from Pattan said that her husband Abdul Ahad War left home in 1999 for Srinagar but never returned back. “I am still tracing him.”
The protestors who had assembled in press colony wore white APDP headbands.
The relatives of Sadrakoot massacre were part of the protest demonstrating a banner asking for punishment to the culprits responsible for bloodshed in Sadrakoot on October 5, 1996.
APDP blames Indian state for not taking any action against the alleged culprits. It claims that they have identified most of the perpetrators of enforced disappearances and killings.
