Hidden graves: India’s crackdown on Kashmir freedom fighters’ funerals

WADDUR, Held Kashmir: Three weeks after he laid down his tools and took up arms, Kashmiri carpenter Mukhtar Ahmed was killed in a firefight with Indian government forces, who buried his remains in an unmarked grave hours from his family home.

Mukhtar is among hundreds of freedom fighters killed in combat and hastily interred by police in remote parts of Kashmir, the picturesque Himalayan region home to a long freedom movement.

Officials have justified the policy by saying it aims to stop glamourising militants during often violent anti-India demonstrations that accompany the public funerals of dead freedom fighters.But these “martyrs’ graveyards”, as they are known locally, have traumatised the families of slain young men and outraged Kashmiris chafing under a broader clampdown on dissent.

Police brought Mukhtar’s body to a compound in the city of occupied Srinagar after shooting the 25-year-old dead in October. It was shown to his family there for identification.“We pleaded for the body to be given over to us,” brother-in-law Bilal Ahmed told AFP.

“But they refused, loaded it onto an armoured vehicle and drove away without even telling us where they were going to bury it.”Bilal and other relatives followed the vehicle until it stopped at the small village of Waddur, witnessing a hurried burial just before sunset with nothing to mark the spot.

A modest slate headstone now sits above Mukhtar’s remains, erected by relatives and decorated with artificial flowers. The remote forested area, one of at least five sites used to bury freedom fighters far from population centres, has become a place of pilgrimage for the loved ones of slain militants.

Some visitors make video calls from their phones to relatives unable to afford trips there or too anxious about the army checkpoints along the journey.Mukhtar’s family is weighing whether to uproot themselves and resettle in the mountains near his resting place.

“I can hardly spend two weeks at home without needing to visit,” his father Nazir Koka told AFP. “Beg or borrow, I have to travel here often.”The portion occupied by India has for decades been the site of an armed freedom movement by militants seeking independence or a merger of the former Himalayan kingdom with Pakistan.