Crime Today News
Around noon on March 22, the armies of India and Pakistan opened the locks of the Aman Setu in North Kashmir’s Uri – for a brief moment.
From each side of the bridge, which connects Pakistan-occupied Kashmir with Jammu and Kashmir, the soldiers of two armies, police and civil administration officials proceeded to the midway point.
This was one of the few instances in the last six years when soldiers from both sides met on the Aman Setu – the “bridge of peace” which had enabled the first-ever bus service between the two parts of Kashmir in 2005.
The bus service has been suspended since 2019 when a blast in Pulwama killed more than 40 soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force and put relations between the two neighbours into a deep freeze.
But the death by drowning of a young man and woman led to a brief pause on the hostilities between the two countries. Pakistani Army officials came to the bridge to hand over the bodies of the couple who had drowned in the Jhelum on March 5 and were pushed towards the other side of the Line of Control by strong river currents.
It was a relationship whose seriousness came to the fore only in death, leaving behind two grief-struck families searching for answers.
‘He jumped to save her’
Twenty-one-year-old Yasir Hussain Shah of Uri’s Basgran village worked as an excavator operator for a road construction contractor. According to Shah’s family, he left for work on the morning of March 5. “We didn’t suspect anything,” said his father Mooz Ali Shah. “It was his routine.”
The same morning, 20-year-old Asiya Bano of Kandi Barjala village, some 8 km from Basgran, also left home. A Class 12 student, Bano wanted to go to the local Shahdara Sharif shrine. “Her mother hadn’t agreed at first but Asiya was adamant,” said Shafayat Ahmad Mir, Bano’s uncle.
Half an hour after she left, Bano’s younger sister and brother and a cousin followed. “They also insisted on going to the shrine,” said Mir. “Their mother told them to come back home with Asiya.”
According to police investigations, the family may have suspected that Bano was in a romantic relationship with a young man. “Before this incident, she had also been staying at her grandmother’s home due to the family’s disapproval of her relationship,” said a police official who did not want to be identified.
When Bano’s two siblings and cousin reached the shrine, they saw, from a distance, that Yasir and Bano were having a heated argument, according to Mir.
“Once her brother and cousin got closer to them, they asked Asiya to come home. But she said she didn’t want to and started walking away from them,” said Mir.
According to Mir, while Yasir Shah and Bano started moving ahead, Bano’s brother and cousin followed them. “When her brother drew near them close to a spot called Lalpul [red bridge], he saw both of them talking. Suddenly, Asiya jumped into the river,” recalled Mir.
In a panic, Bano’s 16-year-old brother jumped in to save her. The third person to jump into the river was Yasir Shah. “He took out his phone and jacket and jumped into the river,” said Mir. “Our sense is that he wanted to save Asiya.”
Only Bano’s young brother managed to float to the side of the river. “The strong gushing waters swept away both Yasir and Asiya,” said Mir.
18-day search
As rescue teams from the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Indian Army launched a search operation that stretched on for days, both families struggled to make sense of the incident.
“We had no idea that he had been talking to a girl,” said Yasir’s father, Mooz Ali Shah. “These days, with mobile phones at hand, parents hardly get an inkling of what their kids are up to.” Mooz Shah said there had been no conversation about getting Yasir married either.
Asiya Bano’s father, Mohabbat Khan, also said he was unaware of any relationship between the two. “I work in Srinagar and am mostly out due to work,” said Khan. “We didn’t know that she was in touch with this boy and how they had met.”
According to the police, Yasir may have met Bano for the first time during a work assignment in Kandi Barjala village. “The two fell in love and were in a relationship for a long time,” said the police officer.
A body is spotted
With the bodies unrecovered for more than two weeks, the families began to suspect that the couple might have survived and eloped.
But 16 days after the incident, a man’s body was found stuck between two big rocks in the middle of the Jehlum river. A Navy team attempted to retrieve the body. But due to strong currents, it drifted across the Line of Control towards Chakothi in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, said the Indian Army’s public relations officer in Srinagar.
A video of a naval commando trying to pull the body out from the gushing water on March 20 shows how close Indian authorities were to recovering Shah’s body.
“The commando had fixed a rope around Yasir’s body but he was unable to hold on because of the slippery rocks. Due to the strong currents, the rope snapped and his body was swept away,” said Mir, who had witnessed this part of the rescue.
According to the police, by then Asiya’s body had already flown deep into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. “Her body had been recovered by Pakistani authorities at a place called Domail. It’s a confluence point of Jhelum and Kishanganga,” said a police officer. “Nobody from there had claimed the body and they had kept it in the mortuary.”
According to the police, the Indian Army eventually established communication with the Pakistani Army, which took some time to cross check the details of the drowned couple. Eventually, the handover of the bodies was fixed for March 22.
The tragedy enabled a few cordial moments between the two neighbours but Bano’s family is haunted by the question of why she jumped into the river. “This question will always remain with us,” said Khan, Bano’s father. Had even one of them been saved, there might have been answers, said Bano’s uncle Mir. “But it seems that they were destined to die together.”
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