He was a theatre artist and had even done a brief role in a Bollywood movie. That was before he disappeared along with another boy in August. Saqib Bilal and another boy, a Class 9 student from Hajin Bandipora, were killed along with a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an 18-hour gun battle with security forces in Mujgund on the outskirts of Srinagar on December 9.
Both the boys had left their homes on August 31 and Bilal’s family is at a loss to understand why he joined militancy. They looked everywhere and his mother even brought an amulet from a faith healer for her son’s safety. “For more than a month, we went to places to find them. Ultimately, we realised the unthinkable,” Asim Aijaz, Bilal’s maternal uncle, said.
“He had an interest in engineering. We could never understand why he joined. In fact, he left home on the day to buy some groceries. People had seen the two boys riding behind a third person on a bike,” Aijaz said.