Tale of two Kashmiri boys’ ordeal

Two young boys Ahsan and Faisal who shot into spotlight due to their arrest at the hands of Indian personnel just for the ‘sin’ of paying a visit to another spot via the forest route without any motive, have now come up with the details of what happened to them and how.

The narrator is Ahsan Khurshid son of Muhammad Khurshid, one of these boys. Ahsan says,” My class fellow and friend Faisal planned to visit Pir Kanthi Ziarat. On 21 Sep 2016, we went to Khaliana for Pir Kanthi via forest route. When we reached a location known as Dhoke Punch, India’s Border Security Force arrested us, covered our eyes with black cloth and took us to their post. Following our arrest, ISF (Indian Security Forces) soldiers have been putting enormous pressure on us throughout to make us confess that we were Mujahideen (freedom fighters) who were coming back to our original area from IOK (Indian Occupied Kashmir). Not only that, the Indian forces also tried to link us with Uri incident without any justification and without any evidence at hand. The fact is that we had no idea about this incident as it was not in our knowledge at all. So, it was natural for us to tell the Indians that we did not know about this incident and we also denied any kind of affiliation with any organization.

But the pressure did not subside nor did our detention come to an end at that point of time. After a few days we were handed over to some ‘expert’ individuals who, after interrogation took us to Jammu and produced us before a civil judge. After that we both were shifted to Delhi by helicopter for further interrogation. Before every interrogation we were injected with some toxin which made us lose our senses. They pressured us to provide information regarding Mujahideen activities, training camps, offices and activities at Chakothi Terminal. We maintained our innocence about such activities. We were again shifted to Jammu Jail and kept with arrested Mujahideen. There were 23 Mujahideen and two truck drivers who were undergoing imprisonment for the past 10 years. 

An advocate named Shafqat Mehmood met us twice in Jammu Jail and informed us that he has appealed our case in the High Court and told us that we were innocent and would be released soon.

However, it was after six months of this ordeal that we were handed over to Pakistan Rangers at Wahgah Border. After little questioning, we were then sent to Rawalpindi from where we were brought to Muzaffarabad fort and released after debriefing”.