The two Pakistanis arrested for allegedly facilitating the terrorist attack on an Indian army base in Uri, Kashmir on 18 September are Class 10 students, the family of one boy and their school principal have told The Indian Express. The report said that Faisal Husain Awan, residing in Potha Jandgran near the Koomi Kote village in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and his friend Ahsan Khursheed from Khilayana Khurd in Muzzafarabad’s Hattain Bala tehsil were arrested on 21 September. Both the villages where the two accused reside are an hour’s walk away from the LoC.
But Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Awan’s brother, a Lahore-based physician, told The Indian Express that both boys were at home on 17 September, the day that the Uri terrorists reportedly crossed the Line of Control. On 20 September, Tabassum said that his brother woke up late and he decided not to go to school. Instead, Awan planned to visit the nearby Pir Kanth shrine. His family believes that the boys lost their way and ended up crossing the Line of Control.
“I am his older brother, and I am supposed to protect him. I do not know what to do. I can only hope someone powerful in India reads our story and sends these boys home,”
-Tabassum told the newspaper.
More importantly, school documents provided by the principal show that both of them were 16 years old, which make them juveniles and entitles them to special protections. A PTI report in October had also observed that the four JeM terrorists, who had killed 19 soldiers in one of the bloodiest attacks on an army camp in Uri, had used a ladder to scale the electrified fence at the LoC.
