Despite being the number one athlete of the State since 2008, he has decided to give up sports. He says official apathy is the cause and says that many more athletes from the valley were planning to give up.

But Tanveer Hussain wants his exit from sports to be remembered. He plans to  run 100-kilometres distance as a form of protest to convey the message to the world how the real talent is being 'ignored' in the State.

It had been the dream of Tanveer Hussain's father to see his son...

Farhat Farooq speaks like a lawyer. Petition, trial, apex court, BSF court, writ, stay – at 19, she knows everything about a trial. Everything except what the outcome would be. Farhat is not a law student. It is a mission that has made her to learn these terms – a mission to seek justice for her brother.

Two years ago, Farhat’s brother, Zahid Farooq, was shot dead by the personnel of Border Security Force (BSF) at Nishat. On a rainy day, Zahid had gone out with his friends to inspect...

British journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark specialise in investigative journalism and have worked for UK’s The Sunday Times and The Guardian for nearly 18 years. Honoured with ‘Foreign Correspondents of the Year’ award in 2004 and ‘British Journalists of the Year’ award in 2009, they've co-authored three books including the much-admired Deception, exposing America's covert abetting of Pakistan's nuclear programme. Their latest book on Kashmir The Meadow—that aims to...

Shifting of carpet weavers towards alternate and profitable livelihoods is likely to give a great setback to this home-based industry, here. Education becoming popular among younger generation adds to the shift. Older-generation women however, prefer to continue with it.Fayaz Ahmad Baig, resident of Ganasthan in Sumbal in Bandipora district says 60 per cent of population today, compared to 99 per cent of population till the year 2000, is engaged with carpet weaving, here. “Though it has...

Ali Mohammad Bhat, 70, walks gently alongside neat rows of epitaphs connected to each other by piles of freshly fallen snow at the 'Martyrs graveyard' in Batmaloo in uptown Srinagar. He stops at the fifth grave in the second row.

With the end of his pheran (A closed cloak Kashmiris wear) he wipes the epitaph of this two-decade-old grave, and reads aloud: “Shaheed (Martyred) Mohd Irfan Bhat, son of Ali Mohd Bhat, who attained martyrdom on 21 January 1991 at Gaw Kadal.”

“He was the...

In Kashmir, police action against the officials of school board has once again raked the freedom of expression debate. Many educationist in and outside the state have termed the recent filing of case over wrong illustration of policemen in an Urdu textbook as 'unnecessary interference' in education. In an exclusive interview with Kashmir Dispatch correspondent Mudasir Ahmad, Board of School Education chief Sheikh Bashir says he was ‘not surprised’ at police action, but the matter could...

Despite being declared as a model village in 2008, Palhallan-Pattan in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district is devoid of all basic facilities. No steps, whatsoever, have been taken for its development as a model village.
“All development work here dates back to the time of former prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq. No government after that paid any heed towards development of the area. That time population of the area was 12, 000. Today it has grown above 40,000,”...

The cry for justice for two boys killed over an eve-teasing in Mumbai may have reached far and wide, but the murder of two young boys of Mattan, in south Kashmir's Anantnag district, who had helped police to locate a house of ‘narcotics dealer’, has been mute beyond the wails of their families.
Within 24-hours of helping the police, two friends, Sabzar Ahmed Bhat son of Ghulam Rasool Bhat (24) of Mattan and Muzaffar Ahmed Kenu son of Ghulam Mohamad of Dharan were murdered.
The family...