Mudassir Kuloo
Boniyar (Uri): On December 10, Azim Nazir Khan woke up to the sight of wooded mountains facing his room in Arunboo village of Boniyar in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
He wore his brand new black jacket and asked his mother how he looked. She teased him, saying, “You resemble a Bollywood actor”.
When she saw her son’s face next, it was lifeless, without eyes, tongue, or ears.
Azim, that day, boarded a cab to Azadgunj, Baramulla, where he had been working as a trainer in the Hulk Gym Centre for the last 10 years.
He stayed there for three days and went missing from the gym proprietor’s home on December 13.
The next day, the family of the deceased filed a missing report in Baramulla police station, stating they were unable to contact their son.
Police began its investigation and searched for the boy in the localities surrounding the gym, but in vain.
On December 18, police found Azim’s body hanging from the ceiling of a room in the building housing the gym.
Police subsequently constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the gruesome murder of the 25-year-old.
Azim’s family accuses Abdul Khaliq Buroo, the proprietor of the gym, of killing him.
“I had trust on that family, but they broke my trust by killing my son,” Nazir Khan, Azim’s father, alleges. “I did not ever think that they will brutally kill my son.”
“My son would come home on Sundays and return on Mondays. His uncle left him there to work at Buroo’s transformer repairing workshop. He worked out at gym there and eventually became its trainer.”
He, however, said that Azim never complained about any ill-treatment by Buroo’s family.
“He was never threatened neither I know the reason for his murder,” the father, a driver by profession, who has six other children, said.
Azim’s mother, Nishat Begum, said she went from the pillar to post praying for the safety of her son.
“I prayed at shrines for his wellbeing,” she said, with tears welling up in her eyes. “My son treated them as his family and they reciprocated by killing him.”
Azim’s elder brother, Asif Khan, said that he never complained about any fight with Buroo family.
“He told me several times that I don’t want to work there. He wanted to start his own business and had also submitted the form at Boniyar Higher Secondary for class 12th,” he said.
The Baramulla family, however, denied the allegations.
“Azim was like our other children. He was God fearing and honest,” the family’s daughter-in-law, Rehana, told The Kashmir Monitor.
“Why would we kill him? We can never forget him,” she said, consoling her mother-in-law.
All five children of Abdul Khaliq Buroo have been detained by police for questioning.
Another daughter-in-law, Pinky, a native of Haryana, said Azim brought milk and bread on December 13 morning.
“At 12 in the noon, he left home and did not return. Initially, we thought he might have gone to meet his friend at Rajasthan, as he did in October. We then started looking for him. Later his body was found in the gym,” she said.
“He was trustworthy. We treated him like our biological children. Why would we keep his body in the gym if we had killed him?”
She said the killers should be hanged.
The Senior Superintendent of Police Baramulla, Imtiaz Hussain, said police was investigating the matter.
“Details can’t be shared till the investigation is completed,” he added.
