"Every day I wake up in the morning, I think he might be at the door. In the evening while I lay the table for dinner, my eyes are fixed at the door in the hope that he may just come in," says Zainab, whose husband went missing 10 years ago.Zainab's husband was allegedly arrested by soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir.Zainab is someone that people in Kashmir refer to as a "half-widow".
Estimates range between 2000 and 6000 women do not know the whereabouts of their husbands. They are Kashmir’s Half Widows, women whose spouses have disappeared during the conflict. Some have been killed by security forces , , and some have been jailed. Regardless the cause of their disappearance, they’ve left behind children, and their wives. Without proof of their husbands death, the women are unable to re-marry, receive government funding, and are often cast out of society as a great stigma is attached the now single women. Most of their in-laws disown the women and their children.