There is a man who says his brother, a Special Police official, was picked up from home, tortured to death and to hide the truth, first a fake encounter was organised and when court intervened, a false post mortem report by a dental surgeon was produced. An FIR, he says, was registered under court directions that led to an exhumation after 42 days. He wants action.

There is a father whose photographer son was picked up in 1997. After 10 years, the J-K Human Rights Commission and later, the court established that his son was picked up and killed. The father has chronicled his travails in a booklet. He wants the body “to give my son a decent burial”.

There is a man and his wife in search of their son, picked up by police and army in 2003. They carry a college identity card of their 23-year-old son and a painful story how they sold paddy land to pay Rs 2,30,000 as bribe to a counter-insurgent-turned-politician who had promised to arrange a meeting in jail. Today, they say “If dead, we want the body”.

The line outside the J-K Police headquarters is long as families seeking justice see hope after the recent expose. And at least two new cases are linked to the former Superintendent of Police Hansraj Parihar and his deputy in Ganderbal, Bhadur Ram, arrested for allegedly killing five south Kashmir villagers in fake encounters after dubbing them as Pakistani militants.

Abdul Rashid Ganai of Prung in Ganderbal who was working in J-K Police as a Special Police Official (SPO) was allegedly picked up by the Deputy Superintendent of Special Operations Group (SOG) of Police, Bahadur Ram along with five other SOG men on September, 11, 2003 . According to his brother, he was tortured to death and then the policemen “organised a drama of an encounter to prove he was a militant”. Then, he says, the Ganderbal police were forced to file an FIR (132/2003 under section 302/109/RPC). The fear of reprisals is so deep rooted that the brother doesn’t want his identity revealed but has prepared an application which states that the police had tried to manipulate the case by producing a post mortem report. “But it (post mortem report) was issued by a dental surgeon,” he says. The body was, however, exhumed after 42 days and handed over to the family. “But there was no action taken against his killers. We want justice.”

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