Suraya displays a sketch of her son, Javaid Ahmad Dar. Javaid is the youngest case of enforced disappearance in Kashmir. He was just eight years old when Indian forces picked him up on October 3, 1990 near Zero Bridge in Srinagar, the summer capital, where he had gone to spend vacations at his grandparents’ place. According to eyewitnesses, says Suraya, he was bundled into a vehicle by forces and taken to some unknown place. The calendar released and distributed by the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDF) in 2016 to to spread awareness about disappearances and possibly help finding some of the missing persons.

The clothes of an unidentified man hang from a tree trunk near a mass gravesite in North Kashmir’s Kitchama village. It has been 12 years since these clothes were put there. “He was very young and had severe torture marks on his body. We took off his clothes before burying him hoping that his family might turn up one day, like hundreds of people who have visited this place in search of their kin who were subjected to enforced custodial disappearance by armed forces in the past 26 years.” said a local, Ghulam Rasoon Mir. Nearly 135 unidentified bodies lay buried in this graveyard.

Indian Border Security Force personnel arrested Khadeeja’s 18-year-old son Riyaz Ahmad Dar in September 1994. Riyaz’s father, Ghulam Mohammad Dar, who had served in the Indian Army himself in the 1980s, tried to use his influence to find Riyaz, but could not trace him. After the death of her husband in 2002, Khadeeja lost patience and stopped the search for her son. She had looked for him in almost every jail and torture center. Speaking of him now, she says, “my heart says he is alive. I hope he comes back before I die.”

A woman sits beside the grave of her younger brother, who was killed by Indian forces in 2008. Her older brother Javaid Iqbal disappeared in 1990. The family searched for him, but he could not be traced.

Hussain Bibi lives with her children in Zamoor Pattan village near the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts of Kashmir. Her husband, Ahmad Hussain Shah, and son, Nazir Hussain, were picked up from their home by the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles regiment of the Indian Army on Aug. 15, 1997.

Hajra, 74-years-old, touches the soil from the grave of her son that she received in November 2015. She came to know after 18 years that her son had died near the border town of Uri in 1997. She said that she was too weak to trek the mountainous terrain where her son is buried.

Sarwar Jan’s son, Jalal Din, was taken from his house by the Indian Army in the border village of Zamoor Pattan on Dec. 28, 1999. She searched for him in the nearby army camps but did not find him. She later looked for him in jails and torture centers. A few weeks after Jalal’s arrest, a local resident told the family that he had heard Jala’s screams in a nearby forest a night after he was picked up. Sarwar told the photographer that she suspects her son has been tortured and killed.

Khadeeja, 81-years-old, touches the photograph of her missing son, Fayaz Ahmad Gashroo, who was a college student and an ace cricketer. Nicknamed “Marshall” after the West Indian cricketer Malcolm Marshall for his unmatched bowling pace, Fayaz vanished on May 19, 1990 after Indian paramilitary forces arrested him. A man arrested along with him and later released revealed to the family that Fayaz was tortured for several days in prison, which may have led to his death. But Khadeeja doesn’t believe any of these claims. She says that her son is still alive and will come back. She has spent years looking at his photographs, medals and trophies he had won as a competent sportsman.

Rafiqa’s son, Nisar Ahmad, pacifies her during a psychotic episode. Her husband, Abdul Hamid Shah was 24 years old when he was picked up by Indian army from his home in Hudpora village in Handwara region on the afternoon of April 9, 1990. Nisar, her only child was four months old when her he was taken away. In 2009, she started showing signs of mental illness, which has now been diagnosed as schizophrenia in 2015. She spends whole nights wandering and shouting in the neighborhood. Her son told me that she believes that her husband still lives with them. “Sometimes she claims to see him,” Nisar said.

The sight of the ambulance stationed at a nearby hospital haunts Rafeeqa, whose husband, Abdul Hamad Shah, disappeared in 1990. This ambulance has carried many dead bodies. Every time, the vehicle passes through the area, Rafeeqa starts screaming and yelling, “Nisar’s father has come.”

Haleema sits in a neighbor’s car to go to a sit-in against enforced disappearances organized by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). Haleema’s husband, Abdul Rashid Ganaie, was arrested by the 131 battalion of Indian Border security force on the evening of January 5, 1998. For three years she entirely focused on tracing her husband. Haleema was committed to the cause and became active in helping women like her to get justice. She associated herself with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in order to bring attention to the plight of hundreds of women whose loved ones have been subjected to enforced disappearances in Kashmir.

The only possessions Suraya has of her son are his photograph and a school belt. She occasionally takes them out of her cupboard to relieve herself of the pain she has endured for the last 26 years. Suraya’s son, Javaid Ahmad Dar is the youngest person to become the victim of enforced disappearance in Kashmir. He was just eight-years-old when Indian forces picked him up on October 3, 1990 near Zero Bridge in Srinagar.

Sakina is seen beside a poster made by an Indian artist, Rollie Mukherjee, depicting a Kashmiri half-widow. Sakina, herself a half widow, has been struggling to know her husband’s whereabouts. Her husband, Ajaz Ahmad went missing on February 2, 2002. She was asked to leave her husband’s house by her in-laws. She now lives with her parents who are keen to get her remarried, but she says that she will wait for her husband till she dies.

Rajja Begum, 67-years-old, cries as she narrates the story of her son, Abdul Majeed Ganaie’s enforced disappearance. Her son, 23 years old at the time, disappeared when he was on his way to buy vegetables from the nearby village of Chandoosa in the Kandi region of North Kashmir in the winter of 1998. Eyewitnesses said that they saw him being arrested by Indian soldiers and taken to an unknown place. Raja’s younger son, Abdul Qayoon, who worked as a labourer was found dead in a nearby forest three years later. Raja lives with her husband, Ghulam Qadir Malik and a 17 year old daughter.

Two brothers Mohammad Iqbal Taas, 20 years old at the time and Mohammad Ismail Taas, 18 years old at the time, were victims of enforced disappearances in two different years. Iqbal disappeared in 1996 and Ismail disappeared in 1999. Both were arrested by the Indian army and taken to an unknown location. The house where they used to live remains abandoned since their parents Alif Deen Tass and Khazooran Begum have died.

Fahmeeda, a half-widow, has spent 15 years waiting for her husband, Mushtaq Ahmad Sheikh, who was picked up by Indian Army on September 3, 2001. For seven months she looked for him in different prisons, camps and torture centers. Fahmeeda brought up four children despite facing extreme hardships.

Saja Begum’s sons Ghulam Mohiuddin, 30 years old at the time, and Abdul Rashid, 27 years old at the time, disappeared after Indian soldiers picked them up during a crackdown on 12 May 1991. While trying to prevent the soldiers from arresting her sons, she was fired upon from a close range and received a bullet in her thigh. “I have searched for them in many jails and torture centers but couldn’t find them. In 1992, I lost another son, Ghulam Hassan Lone, who was killed by Indian forces. Now I am very old but I pray to God to keep me alive till my sons return,” she said.

Ateeqa’s daughters were toddlers when the Indian Army picked up her husband, Nazir Ahmad Mir, during a night raid on their house in May 1990. When she approached the army, they denied having arrested him. The family was told that his fingers were cut before he was taken to an unknown place, and that he might have died. Ateeqa visited several prisons in different parts of India but could not find him.

Children play near one of the most prominent mass gravesites in Kashmir, situated in Kitchama village, where nearly 135 unidentified bodies are buried. In 2009, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, in collaboration with local human rights groups found the presence of nearly 2,700 graves in North Kashmir. Some graves contained more than one body. Human rights groups believe that these graves may contain the bodies of the persons who were subjected to enforced disappearances. Locals say that the bodies were brought by the security agencies mostly in the night and people of the area were asked to bury them. Most of them were victims of extrajudicial killings and fake encounters.

Anwar Jan got married to Mohammad Latif Khan at the age of 16. A year later, Khan joined the Indian Army. After they had children, he took an early retirement and started a grocery store. On the afternoon of July 14, 1990, the Special Operations Group of the police accompanied by personnel from the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) picked up Khan from his home in Chandanwari village. “He was dragged out of the house. We tried to resist but they threatened to kill us. My son, who was eleven-months old then, still harbors the pain and anger against the people who took his father away from him,” Anwar told me.

Shaista walks through the land that once belonged to her father but has been, according to her, grabbed by her uncles. She was two-months old when unknown gunmen abducted her father, Bilal Ahmad Peer, on August 23, 1993. Soon after Peer’s disappearance, Shaista and her mother were denied the right to the property she would otherwise have inherited from her father. Shaista has been fighting a legal battle for her rights, including the right to inherit property that belonged to her disappeared father. The case is pending in the court. “I will fight for it till I get it,” she said about the piece of land.