Regaining paradise,one day at a time

Kashmiris are embracing change, but it is a long road ahead to restore trust in the rule of law

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA SRINAGAR, BARAMULLA, ANANTNAG, BANDIPORA & BUDGAM

Zia-ul-Islam, 32, keeps apologising for being hoarse. Like most boys, his voice cracked at 16, but it also became rasp by the scars inflicted in jail, where he was locked up alongside hardened militants in 2008.

It was a summer of mayhem. Zia was 17. “Separatists had called for a 'Muzaffarabad chalo (Let’s go to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir)' agitation against the government’s decision to transfer a part of forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board. We were told that outsiders were snatching our land in violation of Article 35A of the Constitution. My friends advised me to focus on studies but I joined the protests,” he says. In the middle of the night on August 25, Zia was arrested on charges of stone-pelting and raising pro-Pakistan slogans from his house in Fatehgarh Sheeri in Baramulla.

Zia was one of the first few juveniles to be arrested under the Public Safety Act in Kashmir. A year in prison earned him the tag of a stone-pelter, and every time there was unrest, he was kept in detention for days, sometimes weeks. There were seven cases against him that took 14 years of trials before the court granted him reprieve in 2022.

“I suffered 14 years for a mistake as a teenager,” he says. “I cannot sleep well even today. I dream of being in school and then I wake up shuddering. No one wanted to meet me. My classmates have become professors, police officers and doctors, but I could not fulfil my dream of becoming a lawyer.”