The Hindu : New Delhi News : Futile search for son through jails since 1990

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Futile search for son through jails since 1990

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Eighteen years have passed since Parveena Ahangar’s 16-year-old son Javed was picked up by the security forces in Srinagar. Her search for him took her to jails in different parts of the country but to no avail.

“I have not heard from my son since 1990. Where has he disappeared? No one seems to have an answer. Even if he is dead, at least give me his body,” she said, fighting back tears at a press conference here on Saturday.

Parveena and many like her from various States are here to depose before a panel during a two-day “Independent People’s Tribunal on Torture, Extra-Judicial Executions and Disappearances” begun on Saturday.

The forum, provided by the Human Rights Law Network and Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD), is being held at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Claiming that her son was picked up by National Security Guard personnel, Parveena said there were many such affected families in Jammu and Kashmir who were “fighting for justice” under the banner of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons.

Driven to begging

With her three sons behind bars since 2002 in the aftermath of the Godhra train tragedy, Bibi Khatoon from Rehmat Nagar in Gujarat has been forced to live in penury.

“Plainclothesmen, with their faces, covered came to our house. They picked up my three sons saying they would be let off after a meeting with their senior. But they have not come home till today. The police have charged them under POTA (The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002),” she alleged.

“My children are innocent. They were badly beaten up by the police. The policemen abused me when I went to meet them in jail. After my husband’s death, I beg on the streets to sustain my family,” Bibi Khatoon said.

Hailing from Tamil Nadu, Ravi narrated through a translator how he was tortured.

He was “stripped, hit with batons and brutally tortured by the State police” as they allegedly wanted him to confess to stealing jewellery, a crime he claimed he had not committed.

So severe were the injuries that Ravi lost his hearing. The “false case” is still on and he is now on bail.

Sedition charge against journalist

Defending her journalist-father Prashant Rahi, who has been “wrongly accused” of waging a war against the country, sedition and conspiracy, young Shikha wanted to know why he was illegally detained for five days before being produced before a district magistrate.

“My father, who was a correspondent with The Statesman, has been working as a social activist for the past so many years. He has always highlighted the struggles of the common people."

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