The piercing cries of a father mourning his son have a way of shaking even the most stoic of lands. And they say that “the smallest of coffins are the heaviest to carry.” On December 30, 2020, in the midst of Kashmir’s harsh winter, the heart-wrenching sobs of Mushtaq Ahmad Wani echoed through the valleys and carried with them the weight of injustice, grief, and unanswered questions. His son, 16-year-old Athar Mushtaq, was among three young men killed in what was termed an “encounter” on the outskirts of Srinagar by police and military. But to Wani or for that matter all Kashmiris, it was something more sinister, another staged tragedy, a “fake encounter,” in Kashmir’s long history of such incidents.

According to official statements from the occupying military and police, the encounter began on the evening of December 29 in Lawaypora, where the occupying military claimed they were fired upon while conducting a search operation. The next morning, after hours of gunfire, three men were declared dead. The police identified them as Athar Mushtaq, Ajaz Maqbool Ganie, and Zubair Ahmad Lone, but their affiliations to armed resistance were shrouded in ambiguity. Despite claiming the recovery of arms and ammunition, the military establishment provided no clear evidence linking the young men to any armed resistance organization. 

Athar, a Class 11 student who had been preparing for his final exams, had left home that afternoon, ostensibly for errands. By evening, his phone was switched off, and his family’s desperate attempts to reach him ended in despair the next day when they learned of his death.  As news spread, Mushtaq Wani’s anguished pleas for his son’s body reverberated across social media. In a viral video, he is seen crying, begging authorities to return Athar for a proper burial. But the body was denied to him. Instead, Athar was buried by the oppressors miles away—a practice that has become disturbingly routine in Kashmir.  “How did my son become a militant in half a day?” Wani cried while his voice was breaking under the weight of disbelief. A father who had seen his son as a diligent and responsible boy now grappled with a narrative that seemed at odds with reality.

The families of the three young men vehemently rejected the allegations by the military administration. Athar’s family pointed out his spotless record with local authorities and questioned how a boy with no history of any such thing could suddenly transform into a combatant in a matter of hours. The accounts of local residents were eye opening. Eyewitnesses disputed claims of surrender opportunities being given to the young men, alleging that the firing continued unabated through the night and they did not hear any announcement or offer to lay down arms. They did not even inform their parents or summon them to the site to persuade their children to lay down arms. This was something the occupying military or the police does sometimes.

This incident came on the heels of another damning case: the Amshipora fake encounter, where three laborers were killed and falsely branded as “militants”, only for the truth to emerge later. The parallels between these two cases were hard to ignore—unarmed civilians killed under dubious circumstances, weapons conveniently “recovered,” and narratives spun to justify the unjustifiable. 

The aftermath of Lawaypora also mirrored a well-worn script. The military administration swiftly branded the young men as over-ground workers or recent recruits and offered vague “evidence” while deflecting demands for accountability. For families like the Wanis, such narratives were cold comfort. 

The image of Mushtaq Wani, a grieving father stripped of the right to mourn his son in his ancestral graveyard, became a symbol of the deep-seated anguish that pervades Kashmir. His cries exposed the chasm between the “official” version of events and the lived reality of Kashmiri families, who often find themselves at the mercy of opaque processes and unchecked power. The question remains: How many more fathers will have to cry for their sons before the world listens? How many more families will be denied the closure of laying their loved ones to rest? Mushtaq Wani’s cries may have shaken Kashmir, but they also serve as a stark reminder that the fight for justice in the valley is far from over.