Srinagar, Apr 04: Hopes of the family to trace their missing son were rekindled after the phone number he was using rung on Wednesday. However, the hopes were shattered when the family came to know that the mobile operators have assigned the number of their son to someone else.
Manzoor Ahmad, 22, of Diver village in north Kashmir’s Lolab area of Kupwara district, went missing after he along with another youth, Nasrullah Khan, was taken into custody allegedly by local army unit at Trimukh forests – the upper reaches of Diver-on August 31, 2017.
While Nasrullah was released immediately and treated for nearly two months at SKIMS – as he had suffered injuries due to beating– the whereabouts of Manzoor remain unknown.
His phone number had been suspended since then.
The family said they had been regularly calling on the cell number and every time it was switched off.
However, on Wednesday, the youth’s father Ghulam Qadir Khan said, a girl picked up the phone. “We thought our Manzor is alive,” he said.
Qadir called GNS to inform about the development.
When GNS contacted the number, the caller on phone said she got the number few days back at Jammu.
On being informed that the telecom company had allotted the number to another user, the father let out a long sigh of despair.
Manzoor is a close relative of a local MLA and Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Abdul Haq Khan.
Later the police have registered a case into the incident.
The Army and police then constituted a joint inquiry team (JIT) to probe the case of Manzoor. The teams of police and Army, as well as villagers, also scanned the forests of Lolab to trace him.
In October last year, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court sought the status of the two cases registered by police regarding the alleged custodial disappearance of Manzoor.
