'Let them cut him into pieces': Plea of accused's parents shocks Kashmir after 12-year-old’s rape and murder

Budgam: As families celebrated Eid-ul-Azha with prayers, festive meals and children in new clothes, two families in a small village in central Kashmir sat devastated in entirely different ways — one mourning the loss of a 12-year-old daughter, the other demanding death penalty for their own son accused of raping and murdering her.

Inside their modest home in Galwanpora village of Budgam district, Ghulam Nabi Mir sat surrounded by neighbours and relatives, his voice shaking with grief and disbelief.

“My son is worse than a wild animal. He should be hanged immediately,” the frail old man said.

Beside him, his wife spoke with a firmness that stunned even those sitting next to her.

“Hand him over to the girl’s family,” she told reporters. “Let them cut him into pieces. That is the justice he deserves.”

Their son, 30-year-old Mudasir Ahmad Mir, an auto driver, has been arrested for allegedly raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl from the same village — a crime that has horrified Kashmir and shattered the quiet community where both families had known each other for generations.

Barely a few hundred metres away from the accused man’s home, another house stood consumed by grief.

There was no Eid there. Near the corner of a room lay a neatly folded Eid dress the child never got to wear. Her slippers still rested near the doorway from where she had stepped out three evenings earlier and never returned. Beside them were school books of the Class 7 student who had spent the last week excitedly talking about Eid, relatives said — about bangles, sweets and visiting cousins after prayers.

Now, mourners filled the house instead. Women sat around the girl’s mother as she repeatedly broke down whenever someone mentioned her daughter’s name. Men arriving to offer condolences struggled to hide their tears before entering the room.

“She was waiting for Eid like every child,” a relative said softly. “Nobody imagined we would be carrying her coffin instead.”

Outside, the village looked like any other place celebrating Eid in Kashmir. Loudspeakers from mosques carried prayers across the neighbourhood. Children in crisp new clothes ran through narrow lanes carrying sweets and greeting relatives.

But inside the two homes, time seemed to have stopped.

In one house lived the unimaginable pain of parents who lost their daughter in the most brutal way possible. In the other sat parents crushed by the knowledge that the son they raised now stands accused of committing the heinous crime.

The public reaction of the accused man’s parents has particularly shaken people across Kashmir because it is so rare. In crimes of extreme brutality, families of the accused often defend their relatives, question investigations or plead for mercy. Even in the 2012 Delhi gangrape case, relatives of some convicts publicly defended them or sought clemency.

But the Galwanpora couple did the opposite. Instead of seeking sympathy for their son, they demanded the harshest punishment for him.

Villagers say that is what has broken the community most deeply. The accused was not a stranger passing through the village. He belonged to the same tightly knit neighbourhood as the victim’s family. The families crossed paths for generations in the same lanes, weddings and gatherings.

“That is what makes it unbearable,” an elderly resident said quietly. “Everyone knew everyone here.”

The village now remains trapped between two kinds of devastation — the grief of parents who lost a child, and the unbearable shame of parents who believe their own son destroyed another family forever.