Even a Decade Later, Najeeb Ahmed Refuses To Disappear

(Exposing hate and communalism is a key focus area in The Quint's reportage. Become a member and help us do more such stories).It has been nine years since Najeeb Ahmed, a first-year MSc student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, disappeared from his hostel on 15 October 2016 after an alleged attack by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Almost a decade passed and he never returned. His case remains unresolved. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the leading investigative authority, officially shut it down, declaring there was “no evidence."Nonetheless, evidence was there in eyewitness accounts, the testimonies of his peers, and the unwavering commitment of his mother, Fatima Nafees. What was lacking was the political will, institutional honesty, and social consciousness, which did not bother how a Muslim student forcibly disappeared from one of India’s top educational institutions in the national capital and never returned.But Najeeb’s disappearance was never just about one student. It reflects a bigger issue of Muslim existence in India. His story shows the everyday struggles of Muslim life, the constant suspicion, the built-in bias, and the heavy restrictions on Muslim expression, particularly in public and educational spaces.'Answer Every Call': 5 Yrs On, Missing JNU Student Najeeb’s Mother Awaits SonFrom the beginning, Najeeb was not treated as a victim. He was made into a criminal through his disappearance. Eyewitnesses reported that he was beaten with iron rods and called Islamophobic slurs in front of hostel authorities. However, the story changes within hours, and he is portrayed as the aggressor who “started the scuffle.” This shift was not accidental; it followed a pattern where Muslim suffering is quickly recast as Muslim guilt.Soon, the propaganda machine went into motion. Najeeb was rumored to have fled somewhere. Some news outlets claimed he had “joined ISIS.” These were not random distortions but calculated Islamophobic dog-whistles, designed to erase the real crime, the assault and disappearance of a Muslim student, and replace it with a spectacle of Muslim deviance.Even the supposedly neutral institutions of justice and governance participated in this erasure. The Delhi Police treated the ABVP accused with kid gloves while intimidating Najeeb’s family, raiding their home in the dead of night. Despite being India’s top investigative agency, the CBI submitted an empty closure report. Crucial evidence was left unexamined for years. Every procedural delay, every “lost file,” was not incompetence but a language of indifference reserved for Muslim victims.Mainstream media also let Najeeb down. Initial reports downplayed the violence, calling it a “scuffle,” and later shifted to unfounded claims of radicalization. Television anchors and columnists easily spread the idea of the “missing youth turned extremist,” just as they had portrayed other young Muslims in places like Batla House, Azamgarh, and Kashmir.It was only after legal measures that specific media organizations admitted their assertions connecting Najeeb to ISIS were “untrue and unfounded.” However, at that point, the harm had already been caused. The nation had moved forward, satisfied with the old media sold theory that a Muslim student’s disappearance was surely his own responsibility.Fatima Nafees, his mother, stood firm against this tide of false information. Her tremulous yet powerful voice emerged as the ethical core of this battle. She confronted cameras, police barriers, and courtrooms, posing a question that India continues to escape: “Where is my son?” Her question has grown beyond the personal. It represents the concern of every Muslim mother in a country where Muslim lives are seen as both disposable and suspect. ‘Where’s My Country Going?’: Najeeb’s Mother at Delhi ProtestWhile a Hindutva outfit’s involvement in Najeeb’s disappearance is apparent, the shortcomings of the Indian secular-left are less frequently addressed but just as important. The leftist student groups at JNU, seen for years as the forefront of progressive politics, initially were reluctant to describe Najeeb’s disappearance accurately as a deliberate assault on a Muslim student. Instead, they incorporated it into the abstract terminology of “campus democracy” and “student rights.”This secular equalisation, avoiding the intent and nature of the violence, enabled the left to sidestep the unease of addressing Islamophobia in its own spaces.Numerous initial protests downplayed the issue of Najeeb’s Muslim identity, considering it a lesser priority despite Muslim students and organizations like SIO, Fraternity, and AMU Students’ Union facing the state’s brutal response for protesting on the issue, including arbitrary arrests, lathi charge, and vilification. The broader secular-left often seemed content with issuing statements and holding symbolic protests.This is not merely a moral failure but an ideological one. The Indian left has long struggled to accommodate religion, especially Islam, within its framework. Its secularism, frequently derived from an urban perspective of the upper caste, views religious identity as a hindrance to progress instead of a manifestation of actual oppression. Therefore, when Muslims express their suffering as Muslims, it is categorized as “communal.” Yet, eliminating that identity means erasing the fundamental structure of violence that led to Najeeb’s disappearance.To insist that Najeeb’s disappearance is a Muslim issue is not to communalise his struggle; it is to recognize the pattern that connects him to countless others falsely accused of terror, lynched for beef suspicion, profiled and jailed for their names, and entire communities marked as outsiders and infiltrators.The university has traditionally been regarded as a space of critical inquiry. However, for numerous Muslim students, it is equally a realm of negotiation and anxiety. The message is clear that their involvement is accepted, but taking a firm stance is met with repercussions. Being visibly Muslim, whether through name, attire, or political views, invites trouble.Najeeb’s disappearance symbolizes this predicament. His offense was not any opposition or protest. He was not even politically active, as her mother claims. Yet it was his mere existence, so heavy, that a so-called liberal campus could not accommodate it.To occupy a university seat as a Muslim who reads, debates, and aspires is itself an act of defiance in an ecosystem that increasingly views Muslims as intruders in intellectual spaces.This condition has worsened over the years. From the crackdown on Jamia Millia Islamia students to the stigmatization of Aligarh Muslim University protests, Muslim youth across campuses now carry the double burden of resistance and justification. They must protest against injustice while proving their protest is not “communal.”In this context, Najeeb’s absence is not only a tragedy but a warning, a reminder that the structural exclusion of Muslims from public life begins in classrooms and hostels long before it manifests in lynch mobs and detentions.Nine years later, Najeeb’s name still appears in protest slogans and murals, but the nation remains indifferent. His absence has become normal, adding to the long list of unresolved injustices, highlighting India’s moral decline as a society. Yet, memory in this case goes beyond nostalgia. It represents resistance.To remember Najeeb is to reject silence. As Milan Kundera says, it is a ‘struggle of memory against forgetting’. It is to take back the narrative from those who wanted to erase him. It serves as a reminder to India’s top university, top investigative agency, the media, and the state that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. It also emphasizes that the fight for Najeeb is ultimately linked to the fight for Muslim dignity in India.Fatima Nafees’s relentless struggle goes beyond motherhood; it is an active form of political theology. It is a conviction that truth, even when faced with exile, has the power to outlast falsehood.Her path through legal battles and protests illustrates the narrative of a Muslim woman who refused to allow the system to determine her sense of resolution. Through her, we perceive not only the anguish of loss but also the unwavering moral clarity of resistance.Najeeb’s disappearance is not a closed case. It reveals what India has become. It highlights the involvement of institutions, the fall of secular alliances, and the diminishing room for Muslim voices on campuses. It makes us confront many uneasy questions: What does justice mean in a society where truth is treated as a crime and violence is enabled through the state and its allies? Can there be equality in universities structured upon fear-based hierarchies?Remembering Najeeb means confronting these questions with honesty. It is to realize that his disappearance is not just a tragedy of one night in a hostel, it is the story of an entire generation of Muslims whose dreams are questioned with suspicion, whose voices are drowned by narratives of guilt. Even a decade later, Najeeb refuses to disappear. His absence continues to speak, remind, and demand until his mother’s question is answered, until the silence around him breaks, every Muslim student walking into a classroom will carry his name in quiet defiance.(Talha Mannan is National Secretary of SIO of India and is currently pursuing PhD at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)Umar Khalid and Mahmoud Khalil: The Price of Dissent from JNU to Columbia

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Even a Decade Later, Najeeb Ahmed Refuses To Disappear

"Najeeb’s disappearance was never just about one student. It reflects a bigger issue of Muslim existence in India."

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Topics: Muslim JNU Jawaharlal Nehru University