Shopian: On July 8, 2016, when large parts of Kashmir were out on the streets protesting against the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, a young boy from a remote village in south Kashmir was restlessly looking for an opportunity to leave for his college in Punjab, and fearing that situation in the Valley would worsen and he would have to miss classes.
His family tried reasoning with him, explaining the gravity of the situation outside, but Aabid Nazir wouldn’t relent. He forced his father to drive him all the way to his college, in the cover of darkness.
For his childhood friends in his native village of Paddarpora in Shopian district, Aabid was a careerist. He cleared the written test of the National Defence Academy, India’s premier defence college, in 2015 and aspired to become an officer in the army. But a year later, Aabid settled on engineering as his career.
Recently, on April 17, as heavy rains lashed the Valley, forcing people to stay indoors, the 20-year-old youth left home without informing anyone where he was headed. His family thought he had gone to meet his friends in the neighbouring village, but he hadn’t. He didn’t come back home.
Instead, he set out on a path that has left the Chopan family utterly shocked. Today, Aabid is a fresh recruit in the ranks of the new-age militancy in Kashmir. His nom de guerre is Abu Bakr Bhai.
Aabid Nazir
Aabid had returned home from St Soldier College in Jalandhar on March 31, following the sudden demise of his maternal aunt. The same night, encounters raged in South Kashmir in three different locations, and by the next afternoon, 20 persons – including 13 militants, four civilians and three soldiers – had been killed in what the army described as the biggest anti-militancy operations in Kashmir in the past decade.
Three of the slain rebels – all cousins – were from Aabid’s native village and lived barely 300 metres from his home. Aabid participated in each of the three funerals, which saw people swarming from different parts of Kashmir to have one last glimpse of their “heroes”. He mourned along with the locals and was one of the last youth to leave the graveyard, quietly.
Once home, Aabid retreated to his room and was absorbed in his books. He delayed his return to college upon the insistence of his family that he attend a cousin’s marriage on April 21. The day after that, he was scheduled to return to Jalandhar to take his BTech final exams from April 24 onwards.
“His decision [to join militancy] has broken my back. I feel like life has slipped out of my hands. It is such a helpless situation that I can’t describe it in words,” Aabid’s father Nazir Ahmad Chopan told The Wire at his single-storey house, crying.
Regaining his composure, Chopan, an orchardist, then shared the struggle he had gone through to provide Aabid and his three other children with every facility to ensure they didn’t get “distracted” from their studies.
He talked about trying to “protect” them from the turbulent situation in Kashmir, even sending Aabid to Srinagar after he cleared his class X exams to keep him away from the ‘happenings’ in his village.
Padderpora is spread over 150-odd households and is heavily influenced by Jamaat-e-Islami ideology. Like the three slain militants from the village, Aabid’s embrace of militancy came to light in the typical way the youth in Kashmir these days announce their entry into the ranks of militants – by posing with an AK-47 rifle and posting the picture on social media.
Every time Chopan spoke about his son, he bit his lips and ran his fingers through his hair in an act of desperation.
Aabid was the brightest of his four children and had always stayed away from any discussion on the political situation in the Valley, he said, wiping away tears.
Aabid’s decision has left his father stunned, specially given the family’s background. Fifty-two-year-old Chopan makes no secret of his association with the state communist party and talks openly about how he stayed away from “other politics” during his two-decade career in politics. He had a stint with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party as well, before he joined hands with leftist M.Y. Tarigami.
His elder son, Imran Nazir, a science graduate, states proudly that he is a member of the youth-wing of the CPI(M) and has gone on an all-India tour to understand the outside world.
“Had we come to know about his (Aabid) intentions, we would have locked him in the room and tied him with a rope,” said Imran, who was until then carefully listening to his father, his face sunken in his hands.
“He didn’t show any signs of joining militancy till he disappeared,” added Imran in a softer tone.
His father interrupted. “I would have explained to him the situation in Kashmir and made him give up this decision he was intending to take. But even I couldn’t read my son’s mind.”
During the past few weeks, Chopan has already been summoned by the army and the J&K police, who have asked him to try and get his son back. “Even they know how intelligent my son is. But how do I know where is he? I will sell off my house and my orchard and give all the money to them if they can find him.”
While the family is struggling to comprehend how their son “gave us a slip”, the April 1 killings seems to have shaped his decision to give up his bright career and plunge into militancy. This has been the pattern in most such cases, wherein a young, educated boy from a village suddenly disappears after a militant from his locality is killed in a gunfight.
“How could he do this to me? Just two weeks ago he forced me to borrow Rs 30,000 from one of my cousins for depositing his fee in the college as he had been warned that he won’t otherwise be allowed to sit for the exams,” a distraught Chopan said.
Mudasir Ahmad is a Srinagar-based reporter.