Najeeb Ahmed Disappearance: Unanswered Questions and a Mother’s Endless Wait

It may be uncomfortable to hear, but those who claim they can hunt down the nation’s enemies from the depths of the earth must be asked: Why couldn’t they find Najeeb? Sorry, Najeeb, but this was always going to happen to you. You were a Muslim in India, and there was little real interest in finding you. Eventually, even the pretense of a search was abandoned.

Najeeb Ahmed did not vanish from some remote forest in Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, or Telangana. He disappeared from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in the heart of India’s capital, Delhi. A 24-year-old biotechnology student from Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, Najeeb had just started his MSc and was allotted room 106 in the Mahi Mandavi hostel. His roommate was Qasim.

The sequence of events began on October 13, 2016, when Najeeb returned to university after a vacation. The following night, after dinner, he had a confrontation with members of ABVP, the student wing of the BJP, in the hostel. According to Qasim, Najeeb was beaten badly and injured. The next day, Najeeb called his mother, Fatima Nafees, telling her he was deeply troubled by what had happened.

Fatima rushed to JNU, but by the night of October 15, Najeeb was missing. Friends searched the campus, but he was nowhere to be found. Suspicion fell on the ABVP students involved in the altercation. Since then, there has been no trace of Najeeb.

Initially, Delhi Police filed only a missing person’s report, stating in their records that they questioned the ABVP students but found nothing. Najeeb’s family accused the police of bias and inadequate investigation. His mother filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court, which ordered the police to produce Najeeb. The police, however, declared themselves helpless. In May 2017, the case was handed to the CBI, which also questioned ABVP students but made no arrests and found no solid leads.

By June 2019, the CBI filed a closure report, stating there was no evidence of Najeeb’s whereabouts or disappearance. Fatima Nafees repeatedly alleged that Najeeb was forcibly disappeared and that this was a state-sponsored cover-up. Protests and human rights organizations raised their voices, questioning why no action was taken against ABVP members despite their suspicious role.

JNU students protested for months, but nothing changed. The country’s premier investigating agency ultimately declared in writing that it could not find Najeeb, and the court permitted the case to be closed. The court also noted there was no concrete evidence of a fight or argument involving Najeeb, and his mobile phone and laptop were found in his hostel room. No other student was held responsible for his disappearance.

It’s a shocking reality: a student goes missing from a hostel in the capital’s top university, and the system simply gives up. The judiciary, the political apparatus, the social fabric, and the nation’s conscience have all failed Fatima Nafees, Najeeb’s mother. India, which dreams of surpassing China, America, Japan, and Germany, cannot even tell whether a promising student is alive or dead.

The government’s incompetence was also evident after the Pahalgam massacre, where anti-terror squads released sketches of two suspects. Investigations later revealed those depicted were poor local men, not terrorists, but by then, social media had already branded them as such. Human rights groups called this a classic case of targeting a Muslim based on a fake sketch and suspicion, warning that anyone could be framed in this way.

Sorry, Najeeb. This country could not even tell your mother whether you are alive or dead. If you are gone, your mother was denied even the right to perform your last rites. She says she will wait for you until her last breath, hoping you will return one day. If only her hope could come true.