KNZ NEWS DESK
SRINAGAR:17-year old Asif Ahmad Mir, who was killed in clashes with government forces qualified his higher secondary examination.
Asif’s father has told KD that he had missed his political science exam due to sickness, adding that he was good at studies.
The family of Mir were looking forward to his results after he appeared in the bi-annual exams earlier this year but the happiness came after he was killed by a bullet during clashes. Under roll number 6106536, Asif has secured 51 out of 100 in the political science paper.
Slain Kashmir teen’s mother:he said, he will be martyred’ Asif’s mother Rafiqa says the family was waiting for his 12th board results.
Did a teenage boy, who was killed near a gunfight site during protests to save militants in Shupian district, have premonition of him embracing death on Sunday?
17-year old Asif Ahmad Mir’s mother says he did. “He woke up, said his prayer, recited the Quran and asked me to prepare tea.
About ten minutes later he came down from his room and performed ablution,” Asif’s mother, Rafiqa, recalls as groups of mourners watch in silence. Asif asked one of his sister’s ‘to bring his jacket’.
Sunday, it was raining in Kashmir. “I asked him if I should serve tea but he refused. I sensed he was in hurry, so I asked him where he was going,” she says. Asif told his mother ‘he had some work with his friends’ who were waiting outside his home in Rahmoo village in Pulwom district.
“He put on his jacket and turned towards me, saying I may be martyred today. I was taken aback, but I put up a cheerful face and asked him why he said so,” Rafiqa, a mother of five children, says. “I just feel, I will be martyred,” Asif told his mother.
His father, Ghulam Mohammad Mir, says Asif ‘would never start his day without reciting the Quran’. “He prayed five times a day. He was my favourite. He was good at studies as well,” says Mir. Mir is livid at the region’s chief minister Mehbooba Mufti who on Monday blamed poverty for killing of youth at gunfight sites.
“She should check her facts. Was the assistant professor killed during gunfight in Badigam poor?” he asks. Dr Mohammad Rafi Bhat, the assistant professor at the University of Kashmir’s sociology department, was among the five militants who were killed on Sunday. Police says Mir’s son Asif was among several thousand protesters who were hurling stones to save the militants.
“There is oppression and it will be resisted. I can’t stop my children, they are not cattle. They see things around them,” Mir, who is a farmer, says. He says Asif had left with two boys on a motorcycle. He was killed about 40 kilometres away from his home.
Asif’s friends are in shock. Silent. “We first got a phone call at 11 am. The caller said Asif has got a bullet and he was critical,” Mir says. The teenage boy, who was injured critically during intense clashes between government forces and protesters near encounter site, succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Srinagar.
Asif was shifted to nearby hospital where from he was referred to Shri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital in Srinagar in a critical conditions where he succumbed to a firearm injury in his head. “What does a bullet in a young boy’s head tell you?” Mir asks.
