Mushtaq Ahmad Wani has kept a fresh grave ready near his home in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. It will be the final resting place for his 16-year-old son who was gunned down in an “encounter” with the Indian army in December 2020, if his body is ever returned to him.
The 42-year-old father is among several other parents in the Indian Himalayan federal territory, anxiously waiting for the body of a slain family member so they can be given a proper burial, even as the army admitted to wrongdoing by its personnel in a gun battle in a separate case in July.
The rare admission isn’t likely to act as a salve to the injuries caused by decades of strife in this heavily militarised region where both militancy and state retaliation have devastated hundreds of families.
