CLOSURE AND JUSTICE are two things that victims of every crime crave. Who did it? Why did it happen? Why did it happen to me? What are the consequences? Even with those answers, the ache lingers. But, without them, the wound festers and erupts when the heart becomes weary.
This week’s cover is Chief of Bureau (Delhi) Namrata Biji Ahuja’s take on how the Jammu and Kashmir government is relaxing rules to make it possible for families of terror victims to apply for relief and rehabilitation. Terrorism has claimed more than 12,000 civilians in Jammu and the valley since the 1990s. Yet, not even a dozen of them got justice, she says.
In his interview, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha says that in Baramulla he met families of terror victims who have not yet received dependant certificates, let alone financial aid. Those of our readers who have attempted to obtain official documents would be familiar with the rigours of the process.
Recently, a friend of one of our editors applied for an heirship certificate, and among the documents he had to submit was a certification that his grandparents were deceased. The applicant, who is in his 70s, quipped that if they were still alive, he would be applying for a Guinness World Record.
Children are at the heart of this week’s issue, with three stories about them. Reporting from Gujarat, Principal Correspondent Pooja Biraia highlights the infrastructure woes and caste-based exclusion in anganwadis in the state. As in many other states, upper caste families are reluctant to let their children eat midday meals cooked by a dalit.
In recent times, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah faced a similar issue in his constituency, and it was also reported from a school in Usilampatti, Tamil Nadu. Both issues were solved, according to media reports. In the second instance, the ice apparently melted after DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, Social Welfare Minister Geetha Jeevan and district officials had a meal with the kids.
Photographer Kritajna Naik takes to the keyboard to highlight the number 15,000—the number of children rescued from railway stations across the country in 2024. And it has risen threefold from 2020.
Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai writes about the film that might abolish backbenchers in schools across the country. I am sure you want me to tell you how, but let me not steal the reporter’s thunder. Page 63, it is.
From Syria, contributor Anagha Subhash Nair writes about eight women who are defusing mines after receiving training from The Halo Trust. Most of our readers would remember that iconic photograph of Princess Diana walking through a minefield in Angola in 1997, wearing a bulletproof vest with the trust’s name on it. Angola then had the highest number of amputees per population in the world—one for every 330 people.
Returning to the cover, I was reminded of the time Resident Editor R. Prasannan reported on the war in Afghanistan in 2002. On his way back, somewhere on the Hindukush, his jeep skidded many times on the icy road. The driver mocked him: “Are you afraid?” Just around the corner, the driver lost control, the jeep fishtailed across the road and all seemed lost.
Then, it stopped right at the edge of a precipice. Prasannan jumped out, lit a cigarette, looked up, and saw the faces of his children in the clouds above.
Long after he returned, I asked him, “Did you think you would die?” He said that more than death itself, he feared an “unknown death”. “I would have been reported missing and my family would never know what happened to me,” he said. It is all about closure.
So, when Gul Hassan Shah, 96, tells Namrata that he became blind crying for his murdered son, we feel his pain, don’t we, dear reader? We understand his plea for justice. And we pray that he and others like him receive it soon enough.