When 65-year-old Ghulam Rasool Padroo started his 90-km journey from home this morning to search for his missing son Abdul Rehman, he had left with a smile. His neighbours in a remote south Kashmir village had gathered in the compound of his two-storey mud house. A villager had heard his 35-year-old carpenter son’s name in a radio broadcast bringing hope to a family searching for its only breadwinner for 52 days after his mysterious disappearance in Srinagar.

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.

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