In time, we understood a universal truth: death is inevitable. Some, like our father, are taken young before life allows them to fulfilment; others are granted more time to savour its offerings. Though it was only in the still, dark hours before dawn that we came to know that the vehicle he, Ghulam Hassan Giri, had been travelling in met with an accident around 10 pm on April 20, 1985. It was a shattering moment—one that irreversibly altered the course of our lives. We had lost the sun of our world, our hero, our everything. My grandparents, uncles, our mother, and a few others rushed—some to the hospital, others to the accident site—to see him. We, the two brothers and our sister, were locked inside a room. I can never forget seeing us weeping through the windows, clueless and frightened. We were too young to grasp what had happened or was unfolding.

In the morning, I recall being taken to the hospital. I sat in someone’s lap at the foot of my father’s bed. His head was completely wrapped in bandages, his eyes swollen and blackened. A few men stood at his head, trying to restrain him on the bed as he screamed, tormented by the pain of his severe head injuries. I was soon taken away. He was then airlifted by a government helicopter to SMGS Hospital in Jammu, a move ordered by the then DIG of Police, Jammu Zone, who also visited him in the Kishtwar hospital.

That very afternoon, people began arriving at our ancestral home in Pochhal, shifting household items from the rooms. I did not understand what was happening—only the haunting image of my father’s bandaged head and his cries lingered painfully in my young mind.

On the morning of April 22, 1985, his body was brought home in a departmental........

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