"They said he was needed for questioning and would be released in a couple of hours. We never saw him again," she said.
Rights groups say as many as 8,000 people, mostly young men, have been "disappeared" by the security forces in Indian Kashmir since an armed insurgency against Indian rule erupted in the Muslim-majority region in 1989.
Manzoor insists her father, who ran a small medical business, had no links to any militant group and she has never been told why he was taken into custody.
For years, she and many others have campaigned to find out what happened to their missing relatives. Now, for the first time, an answer may be in reach.
Last month, Kashmir's State Human Rights Commission surprised everyone -- not least the Indian authorities -- when it submitted a report detailing the existence of 2,730 bodies lying in unmarked graves in northern Kashmir.
Crucially the report said 574 bodies had been identified as those of local residents -- a finding that directly challenged the long-held official insistence that any unmarked graves could only be those of foreign militants.
The commission recommended DNA testing to determine the identity of the remaining 2,156 bodies and the creation of an independent body to monitor the process.
The graves are not mass graves of the sort uncovered after the Balkans conflict, but individual plots in rural town graveyards.
The report marked the first time a state-funded body has formally acknowledged their existence.
"It's a big victory. They have taken one step, a big step. We can only hope they take more," she said.
"I have the right to know if my father's alive and where he is, or if he's dead where he's buried."
The state government has yet to endorse the commission's findings, but in the state legislature last week, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah promised DNA tests would be carried out.
"We are not here to conceal the truth," Abdullah said.
Allegations of rape, torture and extrajudicial killings have been levelled at the security forces -- army, paramilitaries and police -- in Kashmir for years, and detailed in reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
But the few cases taken up by the judicial system have gone nowhere, largely because of special emergency powers that require the government in New Delhi to sanction the prosecution of military personnel.
Bashir ud-Din, the chairman of the State Human Rights Commission, admits he has no way of knowing whether the recommendations of his report will be properly implemented.
"We have done what we can. Now it is up to others. If they don't want to do anything, what can I do? My conscience is clear," the retired High Court judge told AFP in his office in Srinagar.
Until now, he said, official inaction had been the default response to serious charges of rights abuses levelled against the security forces.
"The fact is that those who matter, at the state or central level, have yet to be sensitive enough to respond in a way that would at least instil some confidence ... that the system is there to bring wrongdoers to justice," he said.
The old adage of the truth being the first casualty of any conflict rings particularly true in Kashmir, a region of striking Himalayan beauty divided between India and Pakistan and the trigger for two wars between the South Asian rivals.
The official Indian view on the armed separatist movement is that of a largely Pakistan-sponsored insurgency fuelled by "jihadist" militants from as far afield as Afghanistan, Chechnya and Tajikistan.
The counter-narrative has India's only Muslim-majority state run as a giant army camp, where the security forces act with total impunity to violently repress Kashmiris' desire for self-determination.
Estimates for the number killed since 1989 vary from 40,000 to 70,000 and the breakdown of those figures -- militants, security personnel, civilians -- is bitterly contested.
Kashmiri human rights campaigner Khurram Parvez says the state commission report is the "biggest breakthrough" of the past 20 years, but he also believes its findings are just the "tip of the iceberg".
His organisation, the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, claims it has proof of thousands more unmarked graves in other areas of Kashmir.
"But for us, figures are immaterial," he told AFP.
"We are not fighting to prove figures. We just want the state to acknowledge the phenomenon of enforced disappearances and begin delivering justice."
COMMENTS (17)
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@khalis: Defending the indefensible is a bad practice. Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs have suffered tremendously during Kashmir's lost decade. However, the number of Hindus and Sikhs killed is miniscule compared to the number of muslims who have lost their lives. In any case, most of the hindus except for 10,000 brave and hardy souls left the valley at the beginning of this terrible period.
In a war like situation such unfortunate things are inevitable, and one should not forget that not all the graves are of innocent people many of them are terrorists from across the border.
@Nazir - They are in pakistan fighting taliban & ISI, killing osama and chasing haqqanis....
@Faiz - Mr.Faiz, Kashmir is not equal to Muslims. Kashmir = An indian state with more muslims in it. So dont equate something with something that is not. And many of those people in graves are also pakistanis ( i dont really know if i can call them muslims because if i go by the definition of muslims they don't fit the bill)..
@ayesha: muslim league just played the role of being opportunistic. if im living in fantasy fine. go to any part of world and see the neutral sources. the recorded history. the newspaper of that time. are newspaper of that era also cia propaganda. i dont think so. step out of zia publications and see the world. muslim league played in the hands of brits. it was INC who shook the foundation of brit empire with all secular leaders in it be it hindu leaders, muslim leaders, sikh leaders.
your ignorance is intolerable.
@Bangladeshi: "In fact all anti british movement were started by the muslims and muslims were in forefront of anticolonial movements".
Hundreds of members of Indian National Congress including their leaders like TIlak, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Lala Lajpat Rai and Abul Kalam Azad spend years in jail during the freedom movement. Not a single member of the Muslim League spent even ONE DAY in jail during the freedom movement. Facts are different from fantasy.
I really hope truth comes out.
@Omair Inam: lost all wars with India, naa??
Mr. Omar Abdullah is trying his level-best in this mission for truth. I want to reassure my Pakistani friends that, under the able administration of Shri Manmohan Singh, our government will go to the end of the world to unravel this puzzling mystery of handful of unmarked graves. My personal intuition says that these graves were originally marked properly, albeit with light, non-sticky variety of paint. We must note that due to rapid changes in the climatic conditions of the Himalayan belt from global warming, we have had heavy thunderstorms, torrential rains and thick snowfall in Kashmir over the past few years. The strong, cumulative erosive effects of these forces of nature have washed away the delicate paint making the graves appear as if they are unmarked. We must take into consideration the scientific perspective in this matter and not fall prey to unnecessary alarmism. Let's try to build bridges of love and trust and look for a prosperous future.
@Nathuram Godse: i know u r a paki in disguise
Indian's have a history of war & genocide ever since the 1900s. They conspired with the british to overthrow muslim rule and making subcontinent a colony of the british and in that sense they are real traitors. In fact all anti british movement were started by the muslims and muslims were in forefront of anticolonial movements.If arabs hadn't come here to open up india to the world the indians would have still been living in dark ages now. There genocide of muslims in Kashmir & massacre of shiks.christian & buddist by RSS & BJP thugs are well known facts. Nothing good can be expected from a country that practices nehru & indira gandhi's aggresive polices. But the gandhi family did paid a heavy price for their aggresiveness but still they never learn and act all high and mighty under the cover of secularism and fraud democracy.
Where are the so called secular, who consider that India is giving rights to minorities. Yes, they are giving rights in the form of State Promoted Terrorism by killing innocent minorities including Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs.
Where is the US, International Community on this state sponsored terrorism.
Here we go again. A another bashing between Indians ans Pakis start.