The family of Zahid Rasool Bhat, who succumbed to injuries on Sunday, said the 18-year-old boy’s urge to see India cost him his life.
Earlier this month, Zahid had requested his elder brother, Muhammad Ashraf Bhat, to allow him take a trip to India.“I work as a conductor of the truck. But this time around as the truck was leaving, Zahid asked me to let him go instead. He wanted to take a break and see what India is all about,” Ashraf said.
“Had I known the trip would end like this, I would have never allowed him to leave home,” he added.
Zahid, according to his family, was a bright class 10 student of Sir Syed Memorial School, Harnag.
They remember him as a humble boy who was very good at studies despite coming from a family of labourers.
“We are poor. I have worked as a labourer all my life and that’s what my three other sons do,” said Zahid’s father, Ghulam Rasool Bhat.
Despite all odds, his family made sure that Zahid went to a private school with the hope that he will someday be able to take the family out of abject poverty.
“But it was not to be. Destiny has plans to keep us in misery,” lamented Bhat.
Zahid’s mother, Zaina Begum, wailed in the courtyard of their house surrounded by other women.
Zahid was one of the two people injured in an attack on the truck they were travelling in on October 9 at Udhampur. He lost his battle with life Sunday morning at a Delhi hospital.
‘THEY DON’T EVEN LET US MOURN IN PEACE’
As Zahid’s family mourned in the courtyard of their dilapidated house, a pepper grenade fired by policemen, to disperse protesters, landed amidst the mourners.
Following the news of Zahid’s death, local youth clashed with police and paramilitary CRPF men. During the clashes, police used pepper grenades to quell the protests and one of the grenades landed in the courtyard of Zahid’s house.
As smoke of the grenade made everybody momentarily blind and writhe with pain, the mourners ran to fetch water to ease the pain.
“They don’t even let us mourn in peace, may they rot in hell,” the women cried out in unison.
