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Srinagar: The metal bolt clanked, the wooden door groaned open and a frail, middle-aged woman with sunken eyes stepped out of the house in Bemina, one of the most crowded quarters in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.

“I don’t want to talk about it. We have gone though enough already,” said Farida Shabnum, wife of Abdul Rashid Wani, a timber trader in the city, who was allegedly subjected to enforced disappearance in 1997 by the army’s Gorkha Rifles.

Earlier this month, Shabnum and her two sons – Junaid Rashid and Arsalan Rashid – won a significant victory in the case after a court in Srinagar ordered the authorities to provide them a death certificate of Wani.

The court of special mobile magistrate Massarat Jabeen observed in an order on April 4 that a police investigation in the case which has dragged on for nearly 29 years remained inconclusive and none of Wani’s relatives, friends or any acquaintance have heard from him.

“In terms of section 108 of Indian Evidence Act (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023), once it is shown that a person has not been heard of for seven years by those who would naturally have heard of him, a presumption of death arises. Hence, the issue is decided in favour of the plaintiffs,” the court said, while observing that the government has “failed” to prove that Wani was alive.

“The cumulative effect of the evidence establishes that Abdul Rashid Wani was taken into custody by Gorkha Riffles 8/20 on 07/07/1997 &........

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