After police, they went to saints for their missing son

Maqsood's missing story is only one month old. On May 9, Bader left his rented accommodation at Rajbagh Srinagar for his native village Zalangam, Kokernag -- the native village of Abdul Rehman Padder, whose disappearance and subsequent killing in a fake encounter exposed the "vicious network of police officers" involved in civilian killings for cash and medals.

Maqsood didn't board the Kokernag bus instead he took the Kulgam bus to meet his aunt. He stayed there for a night and boarded the bus next morning for his native village. Since then, more than a month has passed, but Maqsood has not reached his home.

The family's search for the missing son belied the claims of state place. "I went to Kokernag police station to register an FIR, but they refused and asked me to go to the Koimoh police station in Kulgam," says the 65-year-old father of Maqsood, Mohammad Akram Bader. "I travelled to Koimoh police station, but they too refused and asked me register the FIR at Rajbagh police station. It was six days after Maqsood went missing that the Rajbagh police station finally agreed to register the FIR," Akram says.

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.

... contd.