Eyewitness
By Mirza Waheed BBC Urdu Online

I still remember the look in his eyes, and the gaping hole in his side. I could make out from his parched dry lips that he was asking for water.

But I had to move on, along with the rest of a line of men walking close to where the bodies were.

Masked men called mukhabir [informers] pointed out people, who would then be whisked away.

There were five of them lying there - militants, freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on your viewpoint. And one of them was still alive.

We had heard gunshots the previous night and knew for sure that the entire locality would be rounded up.

As we paraded up and down in line before military jeeps, masked men called mukhabir (informers) pointed out people, who would then be whisked away.

Daily occurrence

I was in the middle of a crackdown in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. Humiliating, often violent crackdowns would be implemented by the security forces in pursuit of militants, or sometimes just as an exercise.

Kashmiris are subjected to frequent security checks

I had grown up in Srinagar and lived there with my parents and younger siblings until 1993, when at the peak of insurgency I had to move to Delhi in order to get a higher education.

Crackdowns by security forces were a daily occurrence.

To this day, I remember them vividly, and how you could never quite know what would happen to you.

Once I was taking food to my mother who was in hospital.

As I left the house one sunny morning with a lunch box, I noticed something eerie about the streets. They were deserted, silent, spooky.

Before I could decide whether to go on, a carbine-wielding soldier appeared out a bunker at the end of the street. He waved, yelled and pointed his gun at me all at the same time.

The note said simply: "Let this bastard go. His mother is in hospital."

"Where are you going? Don't you know there's a crackdown underway here? And what's this? Open it!"

"Please sir, listen to me sir, " I pleaded. Ordinary security men are pleased when addressed as sir, my father had told me.

"My mother is in hospital and I am taking this food for her. Please sir! Let me go!" I said.

Food probed

"Oh, forget it, we know all your tales. All Kashmiris are liars." He uttered an expletive as well.

"Open it and let me check."

So, the lunch box was opened and probed with greasy fingers.

After repeated requests and entreaties, he wrote a small note in Hindi on my palm for his colleagues in the next bunker to let me pass without further checks.

Normal life is often disrputed

It said simply: "Let this bastard go. His mother is in hospital."

He did not think a Kashmiri Muslim would know how to read Hindi.

Next security post. About half-a-kilometre away with a machine gun poking out from between sandbags, and a nervous tingling overcame me as I walked up to the security men.

A few glances, some words exchanged in a south Indian language this time. I displayed the writing on my palm.

"What is that?" they demanded to know.

"Who wrote it? Why are you showing it to me? Is that Kashmiri?" a moustached man asked in broken English. He didn't understand a word of Hindi.

And the lunch box was opened - yet again.