Anantnag killing: Teenage boy’s sister recounts desperate last moments

STATE TIMES NEWS

Srinagar: “I fell at their feet and pleaded with them to let my brother go, but they shot him. As I held my brother, I saw that the bullet had pierced through his neck,” says 26-year-old Nadia Bashir, recalling the evening two masked men barged into her house and left her family shattered.
The next day, her 16-year-old brother Sahil Bashir Dar, a resident of Anantnag district’s Watergam, died at a hospital.
Dar was shot dead by two unidentified terrorists on Wednesday evening, according to police. His father and elder brother had gone out to offer evening prayers at the time of the incident.
After her mother finished praying, Bashir said, she heard the main gate of their house open and looked out of the window to see who it was.
“My mother saw two masked men at the gate and repeatedly asked them who they were and what the matter was but they did not respond,” Bashir said.
When the duo tried to open the door of their house, Bashir’s mother started shouting that thieves were at their house.
Hearing the commotion, Dar, who was in the kitchen, came out.
When Bashir came down, she said, she saw Dar had caught hold of one of the men.
“I kept telling my brother to let the man go but he said they were thieves and wanted to rob our house,” she said.
Soon after, the man whom Dar was holding onto started hitting Bashir with his elbow while she tried to pull her brother in.
Then one of the men pulled out a pistol and shot at Dar, recalled Bashir, choked with emotion. “I cried for help but no one came. While the two attackers were fleeing, they fired two shots in air,” she said. After some time, some youths from the neighbourhood came and took Dar to the hospital, while the distraught sister rushed to inform her father. Dar succumbed to his injuries at a hospital here on Thursday.