No one knew that he was dead, killed by the police in a fake encounter, dubbed a Pakistani militant and quietly buried, as The Indian Express reported today. No one knew that J-K Police had awarded its own Senior Superintendent of Police and his men in Ganderbal a cash prize of Rs 1. 2 lakh for his killing. No one knew that Chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was preparing to give a statement in the Legislative Assembly after the J-K Police’s own investigation had exposed a network of fake encounters in its own ranks, arrested two of its men and attached two senior officers.

So when Padroo stepped into Rambagh Police station in Srinagar to meet Superintendent of Police Uttam Chand — who was investigating his son’s disappearance — he wept. “I have faith in God. I hope my son will return soon,’’ he said.

Nobody dared to tell him the truth, not even the officer. “We are investigating. Bring the children of your missing son along tomorrow, we need to do a test,’’ Chand told him as a local schoolteacher accompanying Padroo translated. “I will give Rs 10-20,000 if you bring my son back,’’ Padroo pleaded, not understanding that the police officer was asking him to bring his son’s children to take samples for a DNA test.

For a moment, Chand was dumb struck. Padroo spoke only Kashmiri and when Chand informed the schoolteacher that he was waiting for a magistrate’s order to exhume the body of Padroo’s son Abdul Rehman from a grave in Ganderbal — the order came later, the body will be exhumed today — he listened silently and walked away. Padroo stayed and prayed for the officer’s good health, saying you are a good man and God will reward you. This time the officer didn’t understand what Padroo said but he patted his shoulder, consoling him. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,’’ Chand had nothing else to say. The government had not bothered to officially inform the carpenter’s family about the outcome of their investigation. In fact, there is no such official ritual in Kashmir and the family is perhaps the last to know.

Outside, the schoolteacher had already told other neighbours and relatives, who were accompanying Padroo. Now they slowly started breaking the tragic news to a father, who had started the day with a hope. “The police will open a grave in Ganderbal to see who is buried there,’’ a village elder, Ghulam Nabi Khan told Padroo. Padroo listened but he again hoped against hope.

“For us, he is still alive,’’ he said and the villagers decided to rush to the divisional commissioner’s office to speed up the exhumation process. “This wait is killing. We want to see his body and take him home for a decent burial,’’ Khan said. The J-K Police had arrested two of its men in the case and one of them, Constable Farooq Ahmad, belonged to his village which opened a new dimension to the “fake encounter’’ and the killing.

Said father Padroo: “My son worked as a carpenter for years in Srinagar but didn’t help us with money. Recently, I asked him why and he said he had paid (Constable Farooq, who is also a distant relative) Rs 75,000 to help him get a government job. He was pushing Farooq to return the money after he failed to deliver on his promise.”

Sources said Farooq worked closely with SSP Hansraj Parihar, the officer who was attached after the expose. Farooq is said to have told investigators that he brought carpenter Abdul Rahman to Ganderbal Police after he was asked that “they needed a kill’’ in Ganderbal as “operations have dried up’’.