For the past month, the family have travelled to every part of the Valley and visited every police station to trace him, but without a success so far. "We even went to Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) to look for him," says Akram as he breaks down. "But the police didn't cooperate," he adds.

And it was perhaps the police attitude that the elder Bader turned to the saints -- he is too desperate to know about the whereabouts of his son. For the past one month, Bader has been pinning on the hope given by the saints. "He (saint) told us that he is in the Chottipora Army camp in Shopian," says Maqsood's brother-in-law Bashir Ahmad Bhat.

But another saint told him that Maqsood would return home in next three days. "These assurances (of saints) is our only hope now," Akram says.

The 24-year-old deaf and partially blind Maqsood was the only helping hand to his father. "He was working with me. We were selling maize cobs at Rajbagh. On June 9, I asked him to wash clothes, he washed them and then left for home. I wouldn't have let him go, if I knew that I will not see him again," says Maqsood's father.

The assurances of the saints may have given hope to the family, but an unknown fear continuously haunts them. "I sometimes feel that he has been picked and killed after dubbing him as a militant," his father says as tears roll down his cheek.

... contd.