Junaid Rashid was five when his father vanished from military custody nearly three decades ago, one of the thousands who disappeared in Indian-occupied Kashmir during the 90s.
But after years of the family searching for him and fighting court battles, a judge in the contested Himalayan territory declared what Rashid already believed: his father Abdul Rashid Wani was dead.
It was the first such ruling among thousands of petitions for the disappeared, marking a rare recognition that many other families still don’t have of their loss.
The judgement ordered the issuance of a “death certificate”, but also acknowledged a police probe that identified the army officer who took Wani into custody in July 1997.
Wani, a timber trader, was stopped near his home in the city of Srinagar while carrying “a good amount of cash” on his way to pay suppliers, according to his family and the police probe.
