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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nSrinagar: In a poignant reminder of the unresolved tragedy of enforced disappearances in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), a Srinagar court has declared Abdul Rashid Wani legally dead, nearly three decades after he was picked up by Indian Army personnel and never seen again.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the judgment, delivered by Special Mobile Magistrate PT&E Srinagar, Massarat Jabeen, came in response to a civil suit filed by Wani\u2019s wife, Farida Shabnum, and their sons, Junaid Rashid Wani and Arsalan Rashid Wani, residents of Madina Colony, Bemina, who spent over 28 years in a relentless search for answers.
The court, in its judgment, recorded, that Wani was taken into custody by personnel of 2\/8 Gorkha Rifles on July 7, 1997, in Rawalpora, Srinagar, along with another individual, Farooq Ahmad Butt, who was later released. Wani, however, never returned. Reproducing findings from earlier inquiries and an FIR investigation, the court stated, \u201cThe accused (Major V.P Yadav) had murdered Abdul Rashid Wani in his custody and had disposed of his corpse.”
The case traces back to a habeas corpus petition filed in 1997 before the High Court after Wani’s family failed to secure his release. Acting on judicial directions, an inquiry was conducted by the Sessions Judge, Srinagar, eventually leading to the registration of an FIR at Police Station Parimpora into the custodial disappearance.
The court observed that no evidence was presented by the authorities to prove Wani\u2019s release, strengthening the presumption that his disappearance occurred in custody. Invoking the legal principle that a person not heard from for seven years may be presumed dead, the court ruled in favor of the family and directed authorities to issue a death certificate.
Beyond the legal proceedings, the case lays bare decades of suffering. Wani\u2019s wife stated he was taken away in front of witnesses, while his sons who were only around 10 to 11 years old at the time, grew up in uncertainty, waiting for a father who never returned.
The court\u2019s observation that the release of the co-detainee strengthened the inference of Wani\u2019s continued custody adds weight to longstanding concerns regarding accountability in such cases.
The case is emblematic of the plight of thousands of Kashmiri families whose loved ones have been subjected to enforced disappearances during the past 37 years in IIOJK. Human rights groups have long maintained that almost all such cases remain uninvestigated or unresolved, leaving families in a perpetual state of grief and limbo.
While the ruling offers a measure of legal recognition, it also brings into sharp focus the enduring human cost of custodial disappearances in IIOJK, where countless families continue to await truth, justice, and closure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Srinagar: In a poignant reminder of the unresolved tragedy of enforced disappearances in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), a Srinagar court has declared Abdul Rashid Wani legally dead, nearly three decades after he was picked up by Indian Army personnel and never seen again.According to Kashmir Media Service, the judgment, delivered by Special …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":197983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indian-occupied-jammu-and-kashmir"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/04\/1200-675-26418555-thumbnail-16x9-miss-aspera7600339490298426404.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197985,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197984\/revisions\/197985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}