Wearing a pristine white cloak, the traditional Arabian dress, three-year-old Ayaad strolls from one room to another, too young to realise the mourning for his maternal grandfather who was killed during a militant attack at Sopore on Wednesday.
While the family of the slain Bashir Ahmad Khan has claimed that he was “dragged out of the car and killed by security forces,” after the militant attack, Inspector General of Police, Vijay Kumar at a press conference on Monday termed the claims of the family as “false”.
At the house of the deceased in Mustafabad on Srinagar outskirts, amid sobs and wailing, the toddler Ayaad sprints across the alleys. With an increasing number of people visiting the house, some of them curious about the child request his uncle for meeting Ayaad.
“Come and play with them. They want to meet you. You are a brave boy, aren’t you?” asks a distant uncle Muneer Ahmad to Ayaad.
“The kid woke up from sleep abruptly in the morning and started making sounds of “Thak Thak” referring to the gun shots. He has been getting nightmares since yesterday,” says Ahmad. “His mother then pacified him telling him that the sound (Thak Thak) was of a window being closed by someone, and put him back to sleep,” says Ahmad.
Ayaad plays with his cousins but every now and then, as the playful child turns silent, his family starts worrying. “We are trying to cheer him up. After getting home from Sopore yesterday, the kid was happy to see all of us. But the level of trauma was deep that initially he refused to recognise his aunt, who went to collect him to the police station at Sopore,” says Ahmad.
Even as a pall of gloom has descended on them, the bereaved family members say they are trying “not to discuss the incident in front of Ayaad.”
“Ayaad’s bonding with the deceased was like that of any loving relationship between a grandpa and grandson. Every night, he would make Ayaad sleep next to him,” says Tariq Ahmad, who lives nearby to the house of the deceased and operated a business jointly with him.
It is for this loving relationship that the child accompanied the deceased “otherwise why would a kid wake up at 6 am.”
Ayaad’s uncles say that they are “avoiding playing the videos in which Ayaad is seen crying after the incident.”
“Someone was playing the video but I made him to switch it off. I was hoping that Ayaad gets some peaceful sleep but he has been busy playing with the other children,” said one of Ayaad’s uncles.
The shocked family members say the child escaping unhurt in the incident at Sopore was “no less than a miracle.”
They said this is for the second time in their clan that they have lost a loved one to a bullet. “In 1990s when I was in school, we lost a relative in a similar way. This incident has created a sense of nostalgia for us,” said Muneer Ahmad, a nephew of the deceased.
Most of the relatives said they “were not convinced with the official version of the incident” and have demanded a thorough probe into it.
As people continued to visit the house, young Ayaad feeling exhausted, exited the scene saying “Mujhe daadi mummy ke paas upar ke room main lechalo (take me to grandma’s room).”