Two years after J&K lost statehood, red tape snares bid for justice by victims of rights violations

It had taken Zeenat Bhutto and her elder sister 16 years to begin their fight for justice. But after making considerable progress, her struggle is now tangled in the uncertainty that followed the aftermath of the Union government’s decision on August 5, 2019, to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status under the Indian Constitution.

Bhutto, 28, was a little above a year old when her father Mushtaq Ahmad Bhutto was picked up by the army during a cordon-and-search operation in their neighbourhood of Fateh Kadal in Srinagar’s old city in 1993. Eighty three days later, his body was returned to the family. “My father was killed in custody,” said Bhutto, who is now a law graduate.

In 2009, Bhutto’s elder sister approached the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission asking to be given a government job since their father had been killed by state forces. “Our father was the only source of income,” Bhutto said. “My mother was illiterate. She didn’t know that she could approach the government to ask for a source of livelihood.”

At the human rights commission, Bhutto’s case dragged on for years. In 2019, the family was finally given a ray of hope that they would be given a…

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