SHAZIA MAJEED
 Zubair Masoodi
Shazia Majeed, a gold medalist in library sciences and a librarian in IUST, was very strict regarding her duties. When there was no infrastructure in the campus, except library, she managed all essential study material in the library.
Most of the people on social networking sites keep on asking who was Shazia Majeed? This question prompted me to tell you something about her.
In 2007 when I joined Islamic university of Science and Technology (IUST) as a student of B Tech, it was a small campus. The best thing was that everyone knew each other and this gave me a chance to meet Shazia mam (as we used to call her). Here I want to share an incident. It happened in April 2008 when mid-term exams were going on and I was studying in library. In the mean time, a friend of mine came, thumped me at back and asked me to move so that he could sit as the library was crowded. At that time, Shazia came and asked both of us to go out. We responded by saying that we were just studying, we did nothing wrong and simply refused to go out. Hearing this, she was furious and immediately called our H.O.D and other teachers; and we had to move out. Our initial reaction to this incident was not good and we were totally disappointed. But Shazia had some other intentions and surprise was yet to come; she wrote a letter asking for disciplinary action against us. A disciplinary committee was set up and both of us were called. We defended ourselves well and when she started speaking she spoke good about us and said “my intension is neither to take any disciplinary action against them, nor to fine them, but to induce a sense of responsibility.”
No action was taken and both of us were happy and from that day we started respecting her a lot. After all, as a student you don’t want anything else from your teachers. This incident gave me an idea about her humble nature and a strict personality.
No matter even if you have all the miseries of world , one always tend to be happy on the day of Eid. But this Eid was not the same for the family of Shazia and not certainly for me as well. I was definitely happy till about 7:30 am when I received a phone call from one of my friends saying that Shazia madam had committed suicide. I went into a deep shock. I could not believe that such personality could commit suicide and my mind was in dilemma whether it really is a suicide or a murder.
Today Shazia madam is not with us; she left this world leaving behind a three year old daughter and a lot of questions to be answered. She was a person who contributed a lot to civil society. Every student from all the batches of IUST from 2006 till now know her as a generous person. But the question is what have we done for her, what has our so called civilized society and human rights commission done. The answer is “nothing”.  Recently there was an event “justice for Shazia Majeed” at press enclave Srinagar and hundreds of students and  civil society members participated, an initiative which alone can’t provide justice to her. We can’t just organise an event once in months and then be quite.
We are all familiar with the famous murder cases like those of Jessica Lal and Priyadarshani Mattoo, who got justice after almost ten years. Hope justice for Shazia Majeed won’t take that much time. But the fact is we all are not doing enough for justice. People like Jessica Laal and Priyadarshani Mattoo got justice only after media intervention and massive protests by civil society throughout the country; we need to do the same for Shazia Majeed. If we sit quite and wait for justice then it is never going to happen. We need to put in all the good efforts like the one at press enclave and popularise the justice movement to such an extent that Shazia Majeed should become the talk of every household.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 IST