"Four years of forceful disappearance of my son Najeeb," wrote missing Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmed's mother Fatima Nafis from her Twitter handle on Thursday, as she appealed to the netizens to carry on with the hashtags #WhereIsNajeeb and #JusticeForNajeeb for her son, who disappeared from his hostel on the university campus under suspicious circumstances on October 15, 2016.
Notably, a 'Twitter Storm' has been planned for this day, starting at 7 PM, to amplify the dissident voices of a nation in pursuit of justice for Najeeb Ahmed.
Fatima's appeals to seek demands of justice for her son reverberate across the nation's taut fabric, as many have witnessed over the years this mother's steadfast struggle, clamouring the authorities who have failed to make any progress regarding the probe over Najeeb's disappearance.
She has met with activists from the liberal intelligentsia - ranging from author Arundhati Roy, Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan, professor Nandita Narain - as well as joined protests organised by a host of objectors, from the JNU Students Union to the Jamaat-e-Islami student organisation, Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO).
However, fact remains that even after four entire years since Najeeb Ahmed's disappearance, no one has any clue to where he is.
What happened to Najeeb Ahmed?
For the uninitiated, here's a brief summary of what we know so far.
Najeeb's disappearance
Najeeb Ahmed, a newly enrolled first-year M.Sc. Biotechnology student at JNU, disappeared from his residence at the Mahi-Mandavi hostel on the university campus under suspicious circumstances on October 15, 2016.
Najeeb was 27 years of age at the time of his disappearance and had reportedly been involved in a scuffle with nine members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the night before. Najeeb's family has consistently maintained that his disappearance was linked to this assault that occurred after the ABVP members had allegedly knocked on his door seeking votes for an upcoming hostel election.
Investigation
All the premier investigative agencies in the country, including a Special Investigation Team (SIT), the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police, and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were involved in carrying out the probe for the missing JNU student, however, to no avail.
Even the Delhi High Court had at various stages of the investigation come down hard on the sleuths for the shoddy progress and inaction plaguing the case.
Marked by allegations over fabricated evidences and disagreements between the CBI and the Delhi Police regarding the case, the sleuths finally dropped the line of investigation, with the CBI filing a closure report in October 2018, declaring Najeeb Ahmed "untraced" as the authorities failed to locate him.
However, even with all odds stacked up against her, Najeeb's mother, Fatima Nafis, pushes through in pursuit of her son. The Twitter Storm on Thursday is the latest in the consistent series of efforts put forward by a determined mother, reminding the nation that her son is still missing without a trace, raucously asking, "Where is Najeeb?"
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