Junaid Rashid was five when his father vanished from military custody nearly three decades ago, one of the thousands who disappeared in Indian-occupied Kashmir during the 90s.

But after years of the family searching for him and fighting court battles, a judge in the contested Himalayan territory declared what Rashid already believed: his father Abdul Rashid Wani was dead.

It was the first such ruling among thousands of petitions for the disappeared, marking a rare recognition that many other families still don’t have of their loss.

The judgement ordered the issuance of a “death certificate”, but also acknowledged a police probe that identified the army officer who took Wani into custody in July 1997.

Wani, a timber trader, was stopped near his home in the city of Srinagar while carrying “a good amount of cash” on his way to pay suppliers, according to his family and the police probe.

That evening, his wife and two children sat “all dressed up” waiting for him to return and take them to a wedding reception.

“He never came back,” Rashid told AFP.

The ruling, citing the inquiry, said the accused, an army major, “had murdered Abdul Rashid Wani in his custody and had disposed of his corpse.”

It records the date of Wani’s death as the same day as he vanished, but gives no information as to where his body lies.

“The government has now, after 29 years, acknowledged in court that such an atrocity was done,” said Rashid, now 34.

In Kashmir, the wives of the missing men are known as “half-widows” — unable to mourn fully until they know their husbands are dead.

“If this had happened earlier, I think Kashmir would look different,” Rashid added.

“Our lives would look different, and my mother’s health would be something else.”

‘Opened graves’

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between Pakistan and India since independence from British rule in 1947.

In 1989, after failed political struggles for the right of self-determination, freedom fighters began an armed struggle.

New Delhi poured in soldiers, accusing Pakistan of backing the freedom fighters — allegations Islamabad denies.

The occupied valley was transformed into one of the most militarised spots in the world. Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, were killed and many more dissapeared.

Today at least 500,000 Indian soldiers remain stationed there.

The People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), a civil liberties group based in Delhi, said Wani’s judicial death “encapsulates the human rights story” since violence surged in 1989.

It says Wani was just one case among many thousands of “enforced disappearance”.

There could be as many as 8,000 people, according to the rights group Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

It mapped in 2009 what it claimed were 2,700 unmarked graves in remote mountain zones in occupied Kashmir.

It also quoted residents alleging that they had buried mutilated bodies left by the Indian security forces.

Among those sites was Kupwara, where residents today showed AFP rows of graves marked by rusting metal numbered signs.

One man, in his mid-40s, told AFP that between 1990 and 2000, he and the villagers buried an estimated 500 bodies left by the Indian police as “humanitarian work”.

The police left the corpses, without saying who they were, he said.

“Later, we opened graves for relatives of missing Kashmiris,” he said, adding that some families were able to identify the bodies.

Kashmir’s State Human Rights Commission also examined the graves.

In 2011, it found bodies buried at 38 locations identified by APDP, and said the government had identities for only 464 of the 2,730 corpses at the sites.

The commission said it was possible that “many disappeared persons” may be found in the unmarked graves.

But the DNA testing it called for has not been carried out, and the commission was shut in 2019, after New Delhi’s central government took direct control of Kashmir.

‘Midnight knock’

Rashid said his family had “spared no effort” to find Wani, including selling their family home to raise funds.

They faced pressure to stop, saying they were offered cash from army officers to abandon their search — after being told privately by them that “what has happened has happened”, Rashid said.

“I remember my grandmother telling a colonel at our home: ‘Just give me my son back’,” Rashid said.

Instead, the family pursued the case in court.

A police probe named the Indian army officer who had ordered that Wani be picked up by a civilian vehicle.

Rashid, who visited the army camp with his mother searching for Wani, said he had met the officer.

“I was very young, but I still remember his face,” Rashid said.

Wani’s case is just one among many.

In 2002, Jana Begum, her husband Manzoor Ahmed Dar and their four children were woken by soldiers hammering on their door at midnight. They seized Dar.

“It felt like a bird of prey snatched him from us,” Begum told AFP, at her home in Srinagar.

His family never saw or heard from him again.

The authorities, after protests and legal challenges, organised an identification parade.

Begum pointed to the officer she said took Dar away — but years of legal battles since have proved fruitless.

The family performed symbolic funeral rites in 2016, after police officers told them privately that Dar had died “during interrogation”, his daughter Bilkees Manzoor said.

She was 15 when her father vanished.

“I know my father is not in this world,” she told AFP.

“The only justice possible is for them to tell us what exactly they did with my father, and his body.”

Three other families of disappeared men told AFP of similar traumatic campaigns for answers, but they did not want to be identified fearing reprisal.

“Generations of our children will have to silently endure this pain and injustice,” said an ageing man, mourning his missing son.

‘Impunity’

Few hold out hope that those responsible will face justice.

Indian security personnel can be tried in civilian courts only with special government permission.

At least 50 requests from local authorities for prosecution were made after police investigations found prima facie evidence of human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances, records show.

No such permission has ever been granted.

New Delhi signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2007 but has not ratified the universally binding UN human rights treaty, meaning the offence is not criminalised in India.

Local police and Indian ministries of defence, home affairs, and the prime minister’s office did not respond to AFP requests for comment.

“Impunity is built into the system of governance in Kashmir,” a senior lawyer who has represented many of the families told AFP, declining to be identified.

Even honouring their memory is hard.

Families once held monthly vigils for the missing men, staging silent protests in a Srinagar park, holding up their photographs.

But those gatherings have stopped since a curtailment of civil liberties in 2019, and part of the site they once gathered in has been turned into a memorial — to police killed in the conflict.

“Denying even silent protests amounts to an assault on their memories,” the lawyer added.

For Rashid, like many others, the pain of the disappearances is as fresh as the day they vanished.

“These things will go to the grave with us,” Rashid said.

“In the time to come, when we have children, they too will have to face what happened to us.”