Mother of disappeared Muslim student in India refuses to give up

Fatima Nafees waits for her eldest son Najeeb Ahmed’s return, nearly five years after he disappeared from JNU campus.

As the world marks the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a mother in India is waiting for her son’s return, nearly five years after he disappeared. 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.