A death certificate is not enough for Kashmir’s enforced disappearance victims

Abdul Rashid Wani, a timber trader from Kashmir, vanished from Indian military custody in 1997. While a certificate of his death has finally been granted after 29 years, his family is still searching for answers about what happened to him.

His son Junaid Rashid, who was five at the time of his father’s disappearance and is now 34, told Agence France-Presse (AFP):

The government has now, after 29 years, acknowledged in court that such an atrocity was done. If this had happened earlier, I think Kashmir would look different. Our lives would look different, and my mother’s health would be something else.

He still has haunting memories from the tragedy:

I remember my grandmother telling a colonel at our home, ‘Just give me my son back.’

Kashmir: enforced disappearances

Abdul Rashid Wani’s case is not an isolated tragedy. According to rights groups between 8,000 and 10,000 people have been “enforced disappeared” in Kashmir since the late 1980s. 

The People’s Union for Democratic Rights, said in April following the issuance of Wani’s death certificate that his case “encapsulates the human rights story of the past 36 years in Jammu and Kashmir.”

They continued:

This case is just one of thousands in Jammu and Kashmir where not only has the disappearance been confirmed, but the State forces responsible have been identified and indicted by judicial enquiries, State Human Rights Commission findings and police investigations. Yet, the reality is that no one has been prosecuted till date for any of these crimes and the Central Government maintains a 100% record in rejecting any sanction for prosecution when approached.

The PUDR noted that the judicial inquiry confirmed the abduction and “stated that the agency involved was 2/8 Gorkha Rifles led by an officer named Yadav,” while the magistrate’s ruling later named Major V.P. Yadav as the officer who ordered Wani’s detention.

Half widows

In Kashmir, the wives of the missing men are known as “half-widows” – unable to mourn fully until they know their husbands are dead, AFP said.

They also interviewed Jana Begum. Her husband and their four children were awoken by soldiers hammering on their door at a midnight in 2002. They detained Manzoor Ahmed Dar and she has not seen or heard from her husband since. She said:

It felt like a bird of prey snatched him from us.

The family performed symbolic funeral rites in 2016 after police officers told them privately that Dar had died “during interrogation”, his daughter Bilkees Manzoor said.

Debate in UK Parliament

On July 7, 2026, MPs gathered in Westminster Hall for a debate on “Human rights in Kashmir,” led by Imran Hussain, Labour MP for Bradford East and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Kashmir.

While the discussion was focused on the communications blackout currently in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, MPs also reminded the House that such abuses occur on the Indian side too.

Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, said: 

I have been contacted in recent weeks by many constituents who are desperately worried for their loved ones in Kashmir, and who are struggling to reach them because of the communications blockade. Does the Minister agree that such communication shutdowns, which have also been used by Indian-occupied Kashmir, are often an attempt by authorities to hide and cover up the crimes and human rights abuses they are committing?

Jeremy Corbyn reminded MPs of Britain’s colonial legacy in the region:

The way Kashmir was treated at the time of Indian independence is an overhanging colonial responsibility for Britain that has never been resolved.

The families of Abdul Rashid Wani and Manzoor Ahmed Dar continue to live with wounds that time has not healed. Theses are wounds inflicted not just by the soldiers who knocked on their doors, but by a colonial legacy that partitioned a land and left its people to bear the consequences.

Featured image via the Canary