For someone who has never come across unending mourning and pain of missing dear ones in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), Shubh Mathur’s The Human Toll of the Kashmir Conflict is a must pick. This book is a collection of stories on lives of the affected people, which recognises the phenomenon of enforced disappearances in IOK. In this book, Mathur documents the horrific and unexplainable massacre of Kashmiri people and the pain of their families, who still long for the return of their missing dear ones. The conflict in Kashmir is one of the most critical and terrible conflicts in international politics in which the people of IOK have been subjected to all forms of torture and human sufferings, be it physical, mental, emotional or social.
The book has 10 chapters and includes the testimonies of the victims of state-sponsored terrorism, including the relatives of the people who have disappeared in IOK. In nearly all the documented cases, the concerned authorities have failed to promptly investigate the cases. Based on extensive field work, this book questions laws and justice for the detained and disappeared persons, and other human rights violations including the right to kill, rape and torture by the Indian Occupation Forces (IOF) .
