Srinagar, March 02, 2018 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the family of a disappeared youth, Muhammad Yousuf Sofi, is visiting very camp of Indian troops and police station in the territory for the past over a decade seeking his whereabouts. Muhammad Yousuf Sofi was 29-years old when he was arrested by Indian troops on 7 March 2004 from his house in Mazhama in Budgam and disappeared in custody.
“I want to talk to my father once. When I see children with their fathers I also wish my father was here for me. I feel incomplete without him,” says Yousuf Sofi’s son, Khalid. Yousuf’s family, which lives in Mazhama, went to Magam police station where the police registered an FIR on 7 March 2004. They went to several Indian army camps, apprehending he might have been picked up by Indian troops and subjected to the same fate as that of tens of hundreds of men who disappeared in the custody of forces.
“If he is alive we want to meet him. If he is dead we want his dead body for the last rites,” says victims elder brother, Ghuman Nabi Sofi. The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons has said that more than 8000 people have been subjected to enforced or involuntary disappearances in past three decades in occupied Kashmir.
In 2008, the European Union passed a resolution demanding probe into the unmarked and mass graves in occupied Kashmir. In 2011, the Human Rights Commission of the occupied territory recommended for a comprehensive forensic examination into all unmarked and mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the Indian authorities are yet to respond to these pleas.
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