Kashmir widows may be allowed to remarry 4 years after spouse's disappearance

The move still needs the seal of approval from religious scholars.

SRINAGAR: Wives of Kashmiri men, who disappeared during the region's long-running conflict, should be allowed to remarry four years after their spouses went missing, scholars have ruled.

The religious edict issued on Thursday is designed to ease the plight of more than a thousand so-called 'half widows' who have been left in limbo since their husbands disappeared in parts of Kashmir controlled by India.

As their husbands are not officially recognised as dead, the women face huge obstacles in getting access to ration cards or their spouses' bank accounts and thus become dependent on their parents or in-laws.

"These women should have to wait only four years for their husbands and if they fail to get any information by that time then they are free to remarry," said the edict by a local panel of religious scholars.

The edict still needs the seal of approval from religious leaders before it becomes a binding 'fatwa,' one of the members of the panel told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But Khurram Pervaiz of the Coalition of Civil Societies, which has conducted surveys on the numbers of disappeared, said the move could benefit some 1,500 half-widows.

Rights groups say as many as 8,000 people, mostly young men, have "disappeared" since an armed insurgency erupted in the Muslim-majority region in 1989.

The Indian military and Kashmir's police deny extra-judicial killings while the civilian authorities argue that most of those listed as missing may have crossed over to Pakistan-held Kashmir.

Kashmir, a strikingly picturesque Himalayan region, has been the subject of two of the three wars fought by regional rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947.