Najeeb Ahmed went missing from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the national capital of New Delhi on October 15, 2016, after a reported scuffle with members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The RSS, founded in 1925 along the lines of Germany’s Nazi party, is the ideological mentor of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and counts Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a number of top BJP politicians among millions of its lifelong members across India.
Ahmed’s case has been investigated by the country’s top investigation agencies but his family believes the authorities are in cahoots with those responsible for the student’s disappearance.
Nothing is known about the disappearance of the 31-year-old biotechnology student who was doing his masters at JNU. Hailing from a poor family, he was the eldest of three brothers and one sister.
But Fatima Nafees, Ahmed’s mother, said she has not given up hope of seeing her son again.
“I still believe that he is alive and has been put in some jail. One day he will definitely come back,” she told the Anadolu Agency.
Nafees said she is angry with the government because, after nearly five years, her son has not been found.
“His disappearance was part of a conspiracy by the government, so not much can be expected from them. My child has been used as a pawn by others,” she said, without naming who the “others” were.
Ahmed enrolled at JNU on August 1, 2016, and disappeared on October 15 that year.
“First, the case of Kanhaiya Kumar and then Najeeb. These two incidents created fear among people the government sees as its distractor,” said Nafees.
“But I would like to say that one should not be afraid. Everyone is entitled to study at JNU and these people (referring to those in power) are afraid of us. They don’t want us to go there (JNU), that’s why they do such things.”
Kumar, a former president of the JNU Students’ Union, was arrested along with two other students in February 2016 on charges of sedition for an event held on the campus.
This story first appeared on aljazeera.com