SUHAIL KHAN
Sopore, Nov 10: There was supposed to be a different homecoming for Adnan Altaf Rather.
At 26, the young man from Dangerpora village in north Kashmir’s Sopore was nearing the end of a journey that had taken him away from home to pursue medicine in Bangladesh. His family had waited for the day he would complete his MBBS, return to Kashmir and begin a career as a doctor. His mother, Nighat, had even travelled with him to Bangladesh around 15 days ago so that he could appear in his final-semester examinations.
But on Tuesday, instead of welcoming a son who had completed his medical education, the family received his mortal remains.
Thousands of people gathered in Dangerpora to bid farewell to Adnan, whose body was recovered from a pond near his college in Bangladesh after he went missing on the night of November 2. The funeral brought together relatives, friends, neighbours and residents from across Sopore, turning the village into a place of collective mourning.
For a town that had shared the family’s hopes for the young medical student’s future, his death has left behind grief, disbelief and a difficult question what happened to Adnan in Bangladesh?
Adnan son of Mohammad Altaf Rather was pursuing his MBBS at Eastern Medical College in Cumilla. He belonged to the 2017-18 batch and was in the final stage of his medical education.
His return to Bangladesh around 15 days before the incident was meant to be another step towards completing that journey. Accompanied by his mother, he had gone back to appear in his examinations.
Instead, November 2 became the last day his family would hear of him as a missing student.
According to details shared by the family and reports from Bangladesh, Adnan left the college campus at around 11 pm on November 2 but did not return.
When he could not be traced, concern grew among his family and those at the college. His disappearance prompted a search, with his classmates and others also trying to establish his whereabouts.
A general diary was registered at Burichang Police Station on November 3. But the search for the young Kashmiri student ended in tragedy the following morning.
On November 4, his body was recovered from a pond in Monipur village of Burichang Upazila, around 500 yards from the college campus.
The discovery transformed the family’s wait for news into an irreversible loss. The place where Adnan had travelled to build his future as a doctor became the setting of a tragedy that his family is still struggling to comprehend.
His body was taken to Cumilla Medical College Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
According to reports from Bangladesh, Adnan was scheduled to appear in his second professional MBBS Microbiology examination under the old curriculum. Reports also quoted Eastern Medical College chairman Shah Mohammad Selim as saying that the student had been facing difficulties with his studies and that the college had allowed his mother to stay with him on campus.
These details have become part of the questions surrounding the case, but they do not, by themselves, establish what led to his death.
The family wants investigators to reconstruct the events after Adnan left the campus, establish how he reached the place where his body was found and determine whether anyone else was involved.
The anguish of the family was reflected in the words of a relative who spoke during the mourning in Sopore.
He said the tragedy had affected the entire town, with people from different walks of life sharing the family’s grief.
“This grief belongs to the entirety of Sopore. This entire mourning does not just belong to our Fruit Association; every single individual in Sopore shares this grief,” he said.
The relative thanked the Jammu and Kashmir administration, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh for facilitating the return of Adnan’s mortal remains.
But he made it clear that the family’s struggle was far from over.
For them, bringing Adnan’s body back was only one part of what needed to be done. They wanted to know what had happened to the young man whose education, future and life had been entrusted to an institution thousands of kilometres away from home.
“We want to know what happened to that little one whom we had sent to Bangladesh to become a doctor. He did not become a doctor, but his dead body reached us from there,” he said.
The words captured the distance between the family’s expectations when Adnan left home and the reality of his return.
The relative appealed to the Government of India, the Lieutenant Governor and the authorities concerned to take up the matter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“Was he killed there, and how? We need to know this. That is our only regret,” he said.
The family has expressed apprehensions of foul play and demanded a thorough and transparent investigation. It wants the authorities to establish the circumstances surrounding his disappearance and death, rather than leave the case surrounded by unanswered questions.
There has been no conclusive finding made available to the family establishing whether the death involved foul play or what precisely caused it.
As the news of Adnan’s death reached Kashmir, efforts were made to facilitate the return of his mortal remains and seek intervention from the authorities.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs. Health Minister Sakina Itoo approached Union Health Minister J P Nadda, seeking assistance in facilitating the repatriation.
Sopore MLA Irshad Rasool Kar and the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association also approached the authorities over the matter.
Kashmiri students in Bangladesh held funeral prayers in absentia for Adnan while his family waited for his body to be brought home.
The mortal remains arrived in Delhi from Bangladesh on Monday and reached Srinagar Airport on Tuesday morning. From there, the body was taken to Dangerpora, where thousands gathered for his funeral prayers.
For the family, the arrival brought an end to the painful wait for his mortal remains. But it also made the loss final.
His mother, who had accompanied him to Bangladesh for his examinations, returned without the son she had travelled with. His family, which had looked forward to seeing him complete his medical education, was left preparing for his funeral.
Adnan’s death has also drawn attention to the vulnerability of families whose children pursue higher education in foreign countries, where distance can make an already difficult situation more distressing.
When a student goes missing thousands of kilometres from home, families often depend on local police, educational institutions, diplomatic missions and government agencies for information and assistance.
In Adnan’s case, the family wants a clear account of the period between his reported departure from the college campus on November 2 and the recovery of his body on November 4.
The questions include where he went after leaving the campus, what happened during those intervening hours, how he reached the pond and whether there were circumstances that investigators have yet to establish.
These are questions that only a proper investigation and verified findings can answer.
The family has acknowledged the assistance extended by Indian authorities in bringing Adnan’s body back, but says its demand for an investigation must not end with his repatriation.
On Tuesday, Dangerpora came together to say goodbye to a young man whose future had once been imagined in a very different way.
The people who attended his funeral were not only mourning a son, a relative or a friend. They were also witnessing the end of a journey that had brought Adnan close to becoming a doctor but never allowed him to reach that destination.
His books, examinations and years of medical education were meant to lead him back home with a degree. Instead, his family had to receive his mortal remains from a foreign country and carry him to his final resting place.
For Mohammad Altaf Rather and Nighat, the loss is immeasurable. For Dangerpora and Sopore, it is a young life cut short. And for those seeking answers, the tragedy remains incomplete until the circumstances of his death are established.
The funeral prayers in his native village marked the final farewell to Adnan. But for his family, the search for answers about his final hours in Bangladesh has only just begun.
They had sent him abroad with the hope that one day he would return as a doctor. They now want to know why he returned home in a coffin.
