Mushtaq Ahmad Bhutto was picked up by army during a cordon and search operation at Fateh Kadal Srinagar on 3 February 1993. His family received his body 83 days later.
His two daughters who were one and two years old then couldn’t understand what had they lost. But today, one of his daughters who is studying Law, is pleading her father’s case before the State Human Rights Commission so that culprit soldiers are put behind bars.
Mushtaq’s daughter Zeenat Bhutto says: “On 3 February 1993, as my mother has told me, there was a search operation in Fateh Kadal. My father had high fever as our grandfather had died only a few days ago.
“When army asked him to come out of the house, his heart started beating fast which made the army to look askance at him. They took him away.”
“For days together, our mother searched for her husband. One day a sweeper of the Badami Bagh Cantonment came and handed over a watch to mother, telling her ‘your husband has told me to inform you that he has been kept in the Badami Bagh Cantonment and he has send his watch so that you will believe me’.”
“My mother and our relatives went to see my father at the cantonment where he narrated his ordeal of being tortured by the army,” Zeenat, now 26, says, adding, “Father was taken to Kotbalwal Jail shortly after that meeting.”
“We received his body on 27 April, 1993,” Zeenat recalls.
“I didn’t know about my father’s death till I was 7, but I knew something had happened to him because people would talk about him and then suddenly become quiet when they would see me.
“For many years I was told that Abu, this is how I call him, was in Delhi. And whenever an airplane would fly past they would say my Abu is coming.
“But later my mother narrated to us how she was made a widow in just 4 years of her marriage and how the army devastated our family. I decided to fight for my father. I didn’t know how, but I wanted to do something.
“When I was in school I thought of becoming a police officer and take revenge of my father’s death. Then I thought of becoming a lawyer and fighting for my father.”
In the year 2009, Zeenat’s elder sister filed a petition before State Human Rights Commission for seeking report from army about his father’s killing.
“My mother lived a very tough life after my father’s killing. She started stitching clothes, but that didn’t fetch her enough money. My maternal grandparents took care of our studies and married off my elder sister, but now they have passed away and we are struggling to make both ends meet,” Zeenat says.
For the past 10 years, the SHRC has been seeking report from the army about the killing. The army never responded.
But Zeenat is determined not to give up.