A rare reckoning

EDITORIAL: The recent judicial declaration of a man’s death, nearly three decades after his enforced disappearance, is a damning indictment of the climate of impunity that has long prevailed in the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where allegations of custodial killings, enforced disappearances and other grave human rights violations have repeatedly surfaced without any accountability.

The ruling is significant because it affirms what Abdul Rashid Wani’s family had maintained since 1997: he was taken into custody by an Indian army officer, murdered in detention, and his body secretly disposed of.

The judgment is a rare official acknowledgment in a region where countless families have spent decades searching for loved ones who disappeared after being taken into custody by security forces.

It lends judicial weight to what victims’ families and human rights defenders have asserted for years: that enforced disappearances are not isolated incidents but part of a deeply troubling pattern associated with the conflict in the occupied Jammu & Kashmir.

While the court’s decision offers a measure of recognition to the Wani family, it also exposes the extraordinary delays and institutional barriers that continue to deny justice to thousands of others.

There is little doubt that the legal framework governing security operations in the disputed territory has fostered a culture of impunity. Yet despite numerous police investigations reportedly finding evidence of serious human rights abuses by security personnel, no one has been ever held to account.

The result is a system in which victims’ families are left to pursue justice against overwhelming odds while those accused of grave violations remain beyond the reach of the law.

The Wani case also draws renewed attention to the work of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), which has spent decades documenting the fate of those who vanished during the conflict.

The organisation estimates that as many as 8,000 people have been subjected to enforced disappearance in Jammu and Kashmir since the uprising against Indian rule began in 1989. Behind every statistic lies a family condemned to years of uncertainty, unable to mourn, unable to move on, and often deprived of legal and economic rights. The plight of Kashmir’s “half-widows” has become one of the conflict’s most enduring humanitarian tragedies.

Equally disturbing is the documented evidence of thousands of unmarked graves. Human rights organisations, including the APDP and the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir, have reported the existence of thousands of unmarked and unidentified graves in areas near the Line of Control.

The former Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission also confirmed the presence of thousands of bodies buried at multiple sites and recommended DNA profiling to establish their identities. Yet those recommendations were never acted upon, and the commission itself ceased to function after New Delhi revoked the region’s special constitutional status in August 2019.

The Wani case judgment must not remain an exceptional verdict remembered only for its rarity. It should instead serve as the starting point for credible investigations into all unresolved cases of enforced disappearance, independent forensic examination of unmarked graves, and genuine accountability regardless of rank or office. Every victim deserves recognition, every family deserves answers, and every state that claims to uphold the rule of law must demonstrate that no one is above it.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026