THE MYSTERIOUS CALL

BASHAARAT MASOOD

Eight years ago, Latif Ahmad Baba left home to attend a phone call. He has not returned since. Who the caller was and what transpired between him and Latif is a mystery. Unravelling it could solve the disappearance case.

On April 15, at dusk, a local telephone booth owner told Latif that there was a call for him. "The caller speaks Urdu," he had said. When Latif left to attend the call, his family didn't know they would not see him again.

"He (Latif) left home to attend the call," his father Bashir Ahmad Baba says. "We waited for sometime but when it grew dark, we approached the booth owner. He told us that before leaving his shop, he (Latif) had an argument with the caller".

The anxious father wants to know the reason behind the disappearance of his 27-year-old son. "The next day, I went to the tailoring shop where Latif worked," he says. "They told me he had received some threat calls at the shop too. They were asking about Latif".

Latif was a tailor from Nawab Bazar in downtown city. His father doesn't know who is behind his disappearance. However, events preceding and following his son’s disappearance make him suspect police involvement. “Before his disappearance, he was picked up by police several times. He was severely tortured,” says the father. “After he disappeared, we went to register a case with Maharaj Gunj police. The then (Station House Officer) SHO there refused to register the FIR”. Latif's father says it was the same SHO, who had picked up Latif several times before his disappearance and who had even intimidated the family.

Bashir says in 2005, six years after Latif's disappearance, “some policemen from Maharaja Gunj Police Station came to my house and asked me to accompany them to Jammu. They told me that I have to meet one SHO Chowdhary there. My hopes were rekindled," he says. “However, I was shocked when they told me in Jammu that I have to accept that Latif was a government spy. They told me it would enable me to receive ex-gratia relief".

Bashir didn't accept.

The family still hopes for Latif's return. The day he disappeared, Latif's mother had cooked curry of his choice. He couldn't not eat it that day. But his mother hopes he will return someday and she will again cook the same dish for him. "He will return one day," his mother Manzoora says.