Kashmir's "half widows" wait for lost husbands

By Sheikh Mushtaq

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - As the muezzin called for prayers from the Kashmir mosque, Begum Rafiqa prayed in a dingy room of her old brick house for someone she has not seen for almost a decade -- her missing husband.

"I am neither a widow nor divorced, I am married but without a husband," said 35-year-old Rafiqa.

"God help me, I'm in limbo."

Rafiqa, a mother of four, is one of Kashmir's hundreds of "half-widows" -- women whose husbands disappeared after their arrest by Indian security forces. Many of these disappeared men are presumed kidnapped, tortured and killed.

Since a separatist revolt broke out in 1989, up to 10,000 people have gone missing following their arrest by security forces according to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), an independent group in Kashmir.

At least 2,000 of these disappeared people were married, and nearly all were male and young, the APDP says.

Their wives now live a life of limbo, unable either to close an old chapter in their lives or to start a new one by remarrying, leaving them with the label of "half-widows".

Indian troops, engaged in fighting over 17 years of insurgency, have been accused of murdering innocent civilians in staged gun battles and passing them off as separatist militants to earn rewards and promotions.