“Nights fill us with dread,” says Zainab* (name changed), a resident of Baramulla in north Kashmir. Zainab is in her late forties, and her children have grown up, but as many as three children have been “picked up” by security forces from her area, during raids conducted at night.

One of them, Qasim*, is about 10-11 years old, and stayed barely a few blocks away from Zainab.

“They (Qasim’s family) heard someone banging on their door a few days back. It was quite late. They (security personnel) told the family to call Qasim. They pleaded the forces not to take the boy away but they roughed up the father and took Qasim under detention,” Zainab narrates.

This is one of the several instances of minors being detained by security forces in the Valley after the government decided to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on 5 August. The number of children detained is said to be running into hundreds.