It was meant to be an ordinary Friday for 62-year-old tailor Mohammad Shafi Parry of Nowgam, Srinagar. For decades, Shafi had earned his living from a modest tailoring shop in the neighbourhood. On 14 November, he left home at 8:00 am – just like any other day.

At around 10.30 am, his wife, Rafeeqa, walked to the shop with a flask of tea – a daily ritual, since Shafi always left early. But that morning, the shutters were down. “She was shocked,” recalled Shafi’s nephew, Zahoor Ahmad Parry, as he spoke to The Quint at the family’s home in Nowgam. “He never left the shop locked during work hours.”

When a worried Rafeeqa called, Shafi told her he had been “called by the police to stitch something at the station.”

He returned home about an hour before the Friday prayers and told the famil

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