Srinagar/Shopian: “Allah has given him a very sharp brain. He has always been a topper..
.He would go for his classes to study even during bandhs,” says Rafiq Ahmed about his son Inamul Haq, a 2012-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer from Shopian district in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Haq, a junior of IAS officer Shah Faesal, the first Kashmiri to top the Union Public Service Commission ( UPSC) exam in 2009, had followed in his footsteps.
Like Faesal, the 38-year-old was a doctor before he appeared for the civil services. “He (Haq) had topped the MBBS exam in J&K, too,” Ahmed says in a tone of restrained pride, as he sits cross-legged on a traditional pink woollen carpet in the large, empty drawing room of his two-storey home in the quiet village of Draggad in Zainpora. “But then, Shah Faesal encouraged him to take the UPSC exam, and he cleared it in one go.
” The retired accounts officer is less forthcoming to questions about his younger son, Shamsul Haq. He was killed in an encounter in January 2019 just a few kilometres away from their home. Like his brother, Shamsul had been pursuing a degree in medicine.
A few months before the encounter, Shamsul had joined the militancy. “What can I say? Will any parent want his son to pick up the gun?” Ahmed says. “Picking up the gun means an invitation to death.
Why would I want that?” In J&K Police circles, the story of Inamul and Shamsul is held as a cornerstone of the situation—a grim and stark reminder of t.