On Monday the Government High School Aglar Chirat in South Kashmir’s Shopian district will open as usual. The students will attendant their classes and teachers will deliver lessons as they used before but for Arooba’s twin sister Rutba and her father, Mohammad Farooq Zargar, who is a teacher at the school Monday will be miserable.

Rutba, a student of class 3rd at the school, had always walked to school from home with her sister holding their hand in hand.

She has not many friends. Her sister, Arooba, who was elder to her by one hour and who was also in the same class in the same school, was her only friend with whom she used to play during all these years. Arooba, was enrolled under class roll number 3 and Rutba under roll number 4.

On Monday Rutba will miss her sister and her best friend, Arooba. “I had not seen my sister for last three days,” she said, adding the day she was hit by an army vehicle four days ago.

Though, she knows her sister is no more she does not want to accept the reality.

 “Amy men had taken her away in their vehicle. I don’t know where they have kept her,” she said, adding that on Monday when she will attend the school her sister will not join her.

An intelligent student who writes with both her hands, she remembers that four days ago when they were going to school they stopped near a shop to buy a packet of fried potato chips when her sister was crushed by an army vehicle.

“I ran to inform mother that Arooba was crushed by the army vehicle,” she said, but her relatives said that she was so frightened by the incident she hardly uttered a word.

Mohammad Farooq Zargar, who is the form master for class 3rd at the school, will have to take the attendance of the class on Monday.

 The father finds it very terrible to call roll number 3 because he knows that there will be no answer to his call. The voice has been silenced forever.

“I don’t want to be their form master anymore. I don’t want to go to the class, Farooq said, with tearful eyes.

Recalling the fateful day Farooq said that he was walking to school only few yards ahead of their daughters when he was disturbed by the move of the shopkeepers who were putting down shutters of their shops.

On inquiring he was being informed by a passerby something has happened with the army. Farooq became worried about the safety of his students, who were walking to the school and instructed them to stay inside the school.

 Little was he knowing that her own kid was crushed by the army vehicle and people were protesting against them.

“She was dead on the spot,” he said, adding she was crushed by the army vehicle twice, first on the head and then on the abdomen.

“The last words she utter were “hatae maen mooje,” oh my mother,” said Afrooza Akhter, mother of the slain girl, adding she was deliberately crushed.

Afrooza has been traumatized by the death of her daughter and faints repeatedly.  The reporter didn’t insist her talk to more about the death of her child. Her withered face and yells were enough to show her pain.

The family said that they don’t want ex-gratia or employment. “The only thing we want is justice. The criminals should be brought to justice,” Arooba’s uncle said, adding that they were let down by the district administration who didn’t come to pay condolences to the bereaved family.

“It was announced in the media that concerned MLA visited us but he didn’t nor did anyone from the district administration,” the uncle said.

Arooba was crushed to death on Thursday when she came under an army vehicle and first information report stands lodged against the drive in police station Zanapora. Soon after the incident protests had erupted in the area and people clashed with government forces in which around two dozen people were injured.

Guest