Stone-cold murder: Drug-addict son kills mother in Kashmir

This is the third such incident in Kashmir since October 2022

In a third stone-cold murder in less than six months, a drug addict son allegedly killed his mother in Sopore area of north Kashmir's Baramulla district, officials said Thursday.

Reports said the son strangulated his mother to death in Dangarpora village of Sopore late Wednesday evening. The accused was arrested within hours of committing the gruesome crime.

The body of the woman was subsequently shifted to a hospital for medico-legal formalities while a case has been registered at Sopore police station.

This is the third incident in Kashmir where a son has killed his mother since October 2022. On December 22, a man attacked his family members and neighbors with a wooden log killing three persons, including his mother, and injuring seven others in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.

Earlier in October last year, a resident of Kehribal in Anantnag killed his own mother only to steal money from the deceased. After the murder, the suspect, along with his friend, created a fake story to mislead the people and the police by blaming his relatives for the crime.

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Experts believe such gruesome incidents happening at regular intervals will nudge the society towards disaster.

“We are heading towards a norm-less society. [The institution of] family is in transition as there are more nuclear families. Earlier in joint families there was a mechanism where elders would not only guide the children, but also had a controlling mechanism,” Dr Saleem Jehangir, who teaches Sociology at University of Kashmir (KU), told DH.

Quoting all the three cases, where sons were involved in the killing of their mothers, he said, “In all these incidents similarity is drug addiction among the boys who committed crime. Drug addiction has engulfed Kashmir and if not controlled now, will lead the society to a disaster.”

He advocated for introducing moral and value-based education in the educational curriculum. “Education curriculum has turned market-oriented. It needs to be refined. Besides social institutions have an important role to play,” Dr Jehangir added.

Dr Farzana Gulzar, Associate Professor at KU’s Management Studies department, believes that parents too are responsible for the present crisis in the society. “We are equally responsible as parents if children fall to drug abuse. Because parents are busy in their own world, they forget what their children are doing,” she said.

Dr Gulzar said that the love between a mother and son is unconditional and instances of matricide were extremely rare earlier, adding, "but in contemporary world we have reached this stage.”

“Parents need to give time to create a family bond which they are not able to do. Children live in the virtual world and it is because of such reasons we are losing family bonds. Cultural, ethical, and religious values have to be revived to make society a better place to live in,” she added.