Father wants his son to be remembered as martyr, not ‘missing soldier’

Jammu: Every morning, holding shovel and spade, 56-year-old, Manzoor Ahmad Wagay of Shopian, starts marching towards nearby fields and orchards, looking for the body of his son. He spends hours digging land, and once darkness descends, he returns home, empty-handed.

This has been Wagay’s daily routine since August last year. During the last eight months, not a single day in Wagay’s life passes without digging some patch of land to search for the body of his son – a jawan in the Territorial Army (TA) – who was abducted, tortured and killed by militants.

On his return home, Wagay prefers to sit at the entrance of his house staring blankly at the photograph of his son which he clutches on to. With every footfall, his hopes rise and die. But his unending search continues.

The tragic story of the father’s unending wait to trace the body of his 24-year-old son, Shakir Manzoor, who was abducted and later killed by militants.

It was on August 2, last year, when the life of Wagay turned upside down. His son Shakir Manzoor, 24, a rifleman with the 162 Battalion of TA, had come home to celebrate Eid with family.

While returning back to his unit in Balpora, militants intercepted his car and abducted him at gunpoint. For hours they tortured, Shakir, and his body was dumped somewhere nearby.

Shakir’s blood-soaked clothes were found three kilometres away from his home. Since then the father is looking for the body of his son.

Few days after Shakir’s abduction, an unverified audio clip went viral on social media in which one of the militants, who identified himself as Abu Talha, took the responsibility for killing Shakir.

“Talha who was later killed during one of the encounters had claimed that after snuffing out Shakir’s life, he buried his body somewhere nearby. But till we have not been able to find his body,” told Vijay Kumar, IG Kashmir while interacting with media persons in Srinagar.

Since then, Manzoor Wagay’s unending search to trace the body of his son continues. He doesn’t want his braveheart son to be remembered as a missing soul.

In the official record, his son is considered missing. Unless Shakir’s body is not recovered, the tag of the missing soul will remain attached to him. The father wants his son to be remembered as a martyr.

Though broken from within, Wagay has not lost hope. He is determined to find his son’s body so that they can give him a proper burial. It is this hope that has kept him going for the last eight months.

“I appeal to people to help me trace the body of my son. My heart says he lies buried within a radius of seven-eight kilometres from home,” said Wagay.

This is not the only case where parents have failed to trace the body of their near and dear one. During the last three decades of gun violence sponsored from across, many fathers and mothers in Kashmir have died in their quest to find their missing children.

“Such things are more painful than death. When someone died, he has grace, his family sees his body, touches his face at least there is emotional closure. But when your child is taken away you don’t know where he is. There is much trauma and so many storms rage inside you,” expressed one of the relatives of the deceased soldier. (Agency)