Srinagar: When the thunderous Nowgam blast shattered Srinagar’s quiet night, 50-year-old Mohammad Shafi Parray—a father of three—was thought to be asleep at home. Instead, he was inside Nowgam Police Station, not as an accused or an officer, but as a tailor called in for a brief stitching job.
Shafi, a resident of the adjoining locality, was known across Nowgam for his modest tailoring shop along the Wanabal–Nowgam road, a small space where school students and shopkeepers often stopped to get their uniforms or trousers altered.
“He was honest and humble. Always busy, always smiling,” said a neighbour, standing outside his shuttered shop on Saturday morning, while speaking to the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO).
According to neighbours, Shafi had visited the police station a day before, for some stitching work and returned home briefly.
On Friday night, he was again called for a similar task, but this time, he never made it back.
“He told us he would return in half an hour or so,” recalled his mother, her voice trembling. “We waited and waited. Then we heard the blast. Shafiyoo… Shafiyoo… kutei goukk (where did you go),” she wailed, as she remembered their last conversation.
Moments after the explosion, a fire engulfed the police station building. When rescuers reached the site, they found ‘charred debris’ and body parts among it, the remains of Shafi Parray.
Officials said it occurred during the inspection of a cache of seized explosives, suspected to be ‘ammonium nitrate’ brought from Faridabad, Haryana earlier this month.
“He was a simple man earning a simple living,” said one of his relatives. “He had nothing to do with explosives or police work. He was just doing his job.”
As investigations continue into how a routine forensic process turned deadly, Shafi’s unfinished stitching job remains folded on his wooden table at “Parray Tailors” a silent reminder of a man who went to mend fabric and instead, lost his life to a blast that tore through the city’s calm—(KNO)
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