Al Jazeera report refutes official claims behind mysterious deaths in IIOJK
Srinagar: An investigative report by Al Jazeera has cast serious doubts on the Indian authorities’ narrative surrounding a wave of mysterious deaths and disappearances in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, particularly involving members of the Gujjar tribal community.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Al Jazeera has mentioned the deaths of two brothers, Riyaz and Showkat Ahmad, from Kulgam district as a new pattern behind reported deaths by “drowning” or “suicide”.
The report said physical trauma on the bodies and a long-standing pattern of state violence have led families and community members to suspect foul play. The report underscores how deep-rooted mistrust, shaped by decades of enforced disappearances and custodial killings, continues to fuel the Gujjar community’s belief that their youth are being deliberately targeted.
As per Al Jazeera report, the deaths of Riyaz and Showkat — who went missing in February 2025 and were later found dead in a canal — are not isolated. Another young man, Mukhtar Ahmad Awan, who disappeared with them, remains untraced.
Similar cases have emerged in nearby districts like Kathua, where multiple youths vanished under comparable circumstances. The Al Jazeera report links these incidents to a broader history of abuse, including the staged killings of three Gujjar men by the Indian army in 2020 and the custodial deaths of three others in Poonch in 2023. For the Gujjar community, these tragedies are not accidents but chilling reminders of a violent status quo that continues under the shadow of military impunity.
The Al Jazeera report is as follows:
When Showkat Ahmad’s body was found in Kulgam, Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir — , it had sores and a bloodied eye. His hair was falling out, and the skin on the 18-year-old’s hands and legs was peeling off, recalled his father, Mohmamad Sadiq.
That was March 16, three days after Sadiq had learned that his elder son, Riyaz, 25, had also died, a month after the two young men had disappeared.
According to the official verdict of Indian authorities, Showkat and Riyaz drowned in a canal in the Kulgam, about 10 km (6 miles) from their homes. Their postmortem reports point to potential suicide.
But Sadiq — and many in the Gujjar tribal community the family belongs to — refuse to believe that narrative. Sadiq conceded that he is not sure who is responsible for the disappearance and death of his sons — whether it was security agencies or an armed group. Yet, whoever it was, Sadiq said he is convinced there was foul play involved.
“This wasn’t an accident,” the 72-year-old father screamed, his voice cracking with anguish as he spoke to Al Jazeera outside his home, in an open grazing ground, where his relatives and family members had gathered to offer him support. “They were tortured and killed.”
Mukhtar Ahmad Awan, a 24-year-old man who also disappeared along with Riyaz and Showkat, has still not been found.
That lack of belief in the government is accentuated by Kashmir’s history. Since the start of an armed revolt against India in 1989, between 8,000 and 10,000 Kashmiris have disappeared, according to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), a collective of relatives of victims of enforced disappearances in Kashmir.
“My sons were brutally murdered,” Sadiq insisted.
In the quiet grazing grounds of Chandarkoot, about 68km (39 miles) from Srinagar, the biggest city in Kashmir, a hilly landscape covered with walnut and willow trees shelters flocks of sheep belonging to the local Gujjar community.
On February 13, Riyaz, Showkat and Mukhtar left the nearby village of Qazigund to attend a wedding in the nearby Ashmuji area of Kulgam district. They never reached the venue.
Sadiq tried calling his sons on their mobile phones at about 6:10pm, he said. But the phones were switched off.
“We desperately searched for them near the function venue, in Kulgam, and all the places we could think of,” he said. At 7pm, the family alerted the police. When the youths still had not returned by the next morning, they filed a complaint about them being missing with the police.
For a month, police, the army and local rescue teams searched for them, but could not find anyone. Then, on March 13, Sadiq’s phone rang.
The searchers had found Riyaz’s body in a canal. Three days later, Showkat’s body also turned up in the same canal.
Showkat too died of drowning, according to authorities. But protests have broken out over the deaths, which have ballooned into a political controversy. Sadiq and his family protested on the highway that connects Srinagar to Jammu, demanding an inquiry. A video purportedly showing a police officer kicking a female protester on the highway went viral.
Meanwhile, in Jammu district, approximately 198km (123 miles) away from the site of the protest, police arrested student leaders from the Kashmiri Gujjar community as they protested against the Kulgam deaths.
To Sadiq and others demanding an investigation, the deaths of Riyaz and Showkat, and Mukhtar’s disappearance, follow an increasingly worrying pattern.
In Kathua district, neighbouring Kulgam, two young men, Yogesh Singh, aged 32, and Darshan Singh, 40, and 15-year-old Varun Singh went missing on March 5 while returning from a wedding.
Their bodies were recovered from a canal three days later.
Days later, two other teenagers — Mohammad Din and Rehman Ali — went missing in Kathua. They are yet to be found almost a month later.
Fear of the government and security forces runs particularly deep in the Gujjar community, following a series of killings and unnatural deaths in recent years. The community, along with an ethnic subgroup known as the Bakarwals, constitutes about 8 percent of the population of [occupied] Jammu and Kashmir, according to India’s last census in 2011, though some community representatives argue that their numbers are underrepresented because of their nomadic lifestyle.
In 2020, an Indian army officer allegedly abducted and killed three young Gujjar men in Rajouri district. The police filed a chargesheet against the officer, accusing him of abducting and killing the three labourers in a staged encounter. A court martial held the officer guilty and recommended life imprisonment. But in November 2023, an Armed Forces Tribunal suspended the sentence and granted bail to the officer.
Three years later, in December 2023, following an attack on army vehicles in Poonch district’s Topa Pir village, Inian forces detained many locals for interrogation. Subsequent videos surfaced showing officers beating civilians and applying chilli powder to their wounds. Three Gujjar men — Mohammad Showkat (22), Safeer Hussain (45), and Shabir Ahmad (32) — died in custody, with their bodies displaying signs of severe torture.
Then, starting in December 2024, 17 people from the community died under mysterious circumstances in a little over a month. The victims, including 13 minors, exhibited symptoms such as fever, vomiting, and abdominal pain before their deaths. Investigations ruled out viral or bacterial infections, with preliminary findings suggesting neurotoxins as the likely cause. Despite extensive testing, the exact toxin and its source remain unidentified, leaving the community in fear and seeking answers.
In February 2025, a 25-year-old Gujjar man, Makhan Din, recorded a video explaining why he was about to kill himself — detailing alleged torture at the hands of security forces.
Din, who died by suicide, was questioned over suspicious Pakistani contacts — and was not tortured — the police claimed.
That is not a story many Kashmiri Gujjars believe.
“Our people disappear, and we are told to stay quiet,” said Abid Awan, an 18-year-old neighbour of Sadiq in Kulgam.
“We live in fear, knowing that our voices are ignored, and our suffering is dismissed. It feels like we don’t exist to those in power.”
