On June 30, 2025, when a Delhi court put its final seal on the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) closure report regarding the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, the case fell silent for the law books. The heavy burden of sections and papers was packed into some dark corner of a records room. But in the afternoon of 2026, when I, as a citizen of this country and a Muslim, read the text of that court verdict, I did not hear the justice of law in it; rather, I heard the cold and merciless silence of the system.The court’s order says that no clues remain now, and therefore continuing the investigation is pointless. As though on the morning of October 15, 2016, it was not a human being who disappeared from the Mahi-Mandvi hostel of an institution as prestigious as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), but a gust of wind.In our country, the disappearance of any citizen surely is a tragedy. However, when the person who disappears is a 27-year-old, who came from the narrow lanes of Badaun to the country’s largest university carrying his mother’s prayers and the dream to study biotechnology in his eyes, and whose name is Najeeb Ahmed, then it does not remain merely a case of disappearance. It becomes the most naked mirror of being a Muslim in this democracy: of one’s status as a citizen, and of the deep-seated indifference entrenched within this country’s bureaucratic and policing system.That night at Mahi-Mandvi hostelPeople often ask why we look for identity in everything. Why do we view every incident through the prism of minority status? The answer doesn’t lie with me; it is recorded in the history of that night. On the night of October 14, 2016, when the door of room number 106 of the Mahi-Mandvi hostel was knocked on, it wasn’t just another instance of student politics electioneering. The altercation that ensued, the screams that followed, and the way a mob of accused boys surrounded a lone, terrified new student – none of it was a sudden outburst of anger. Slogans calling him a “terrorist” echoed. Testimonies from hostel students about Najeeb being beaten were even recorded during the proctorial inquiry. Also read: Najeeb Ahmed’s Case Bears Testimony to National Indifference to DisappearancesWhen a Muslim enters a large institution, he does not carry only his books with him; he also carries an invisible suspicion affixed to his forehead due to the politics of this country. What happened to Najeeb that night was a ground-level demonstration of that very suspicion. His clothes were torn, his identity was humiliated, and most tragically of all, when he left the hostel the next morning to save his life and dignity, the first statement issued by the university administration referred to him as the “aggressor” and the “culprit.”Think of what his mother must have gone through when he called her in the morning, crying, asking her to come and get him: “Ammi, aap aa jaiyye, mere sath bahut bura hua hai (Please come here, mother, bad things have happened to me).” By the time that mother reached Anand Vihar in Delhi by bus from Badaun, her son had already disappeared into some black hole of the system. Instead of giving him protection, the university had branded him with the accusation of indiscipline. If Najeeb’s name had been anything else, if ‘Ahmed’ had not been attached to his surname, would JNU administration’s first reflex have still been to call him a criminal? It is that bitter question which this secular country has always avoided facing.The farce of investigationNajeeb’s case serves as a classic record of how our investigative agencies operate when a member of a minority status goes missing. Observing the stance of everyone involved – from the Delhi Police to the CBI, the country’s premier investigative agency – it becomes evident that their objective was less about finding Najeeb and more about burying the case through a process of sheer attrition. The initial 48 hours are the most critical in any missing person case. At that stage, the JNU students named by eyewitnesses to the altercation should have been subjected to rigorous interrogation. Their mobile phones should have been seized, and every corner of the hostel – as well as the movements of his adversaries – should have been placed under surveillance. What actually happened? The police didn’t enter the suspects’ rooms for several weeks.Months later, the CBI seized the mobile phones of nine suspects after being reprimanded by the Delhi high court. But in 2025, it told the court that two of the phones were “defective”, so their data couldn’t be extracted.Would an ordinary Muslim youth escape police action in such a serious case by telling them, “My phone is broken, so please stop investigating me”? In such a situation, it wouldn’t even take 24 hours to prepare a criminal case, possibly under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) charges and a conspiracy theory.But here, the story was in reverse. Remember that period when some so-called national news channels shamelessly ran fake news that “Najeeb was influenced by the ideology of ISIS” and “he has gone somewhere of his own free will.”Who hatched this conspiracy? How did a missing student with no criminal record, whose mother loved him dearly, become an enemy of the state after his disappearance? The Delhi Police later had to clarify in an affidavit before the high court that no such thing had emerged in the investigation. But the poison that was sown into the minds of the public through television screens had, by then, ended the sympathy of the majority of society at that very moment. This is the predetermined script for the character assassination of a Muslim youth in this country.The lonely fight of Fatima NafeesIf there’s one face in this entire tragedy that should keep every single person in this country awake at night, it’s that of Najeeb’s mother, Fatima Nafees.She has been seen shivering at Jantar Mantar in Delhi’s cold nights. Her hands have been seen raised in a plea for justice in front of the heavy police barricades outside the CBI headquarters. And the most painful image has been seeing the heavily booted personnel of the Delhi Police dragging that elderly woman on the road, detaining her. What was her crime? That she was asking the rulers of a democratic country, “Where is my son?”.Also read: Where Is Najeeb? Why Don’t You Care?Patience is highly valued in Islamic tradition. But Fatima Nafees’s patience was not helplessness; it was a complete war against this oppressive system. A domestic woman from a small town, who had never climbed the steps of a courthouse, was forced by this system to stumble through the labyrinth of courts for eight or nine years. The structure of our legal system is so anti-people that often it is the family of a victim that has to become the investigating officer. Fatima Nafees had to appear with a lawyer at every hearing to prove which clue the CBI had missed, which witness the police had abandoned. The state, whose job it was to protect citizens and ensure justice, appeared to be standing in court as a shield for the accused.When the court accepted the CBI’s closure report in June 2025, not only did a file shut before the eyes of that old mother; but the last brick of trust that an ordinary Muslim in this country had placed in Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s Constitution also crumbled. That decision, in effect, was: “We don’t know where your son is, and now we don’t even want to know.”Hypocrisy of secular politics and our own defectsWhile Najeeb’s case exposed the anti-Muslim stance of right-wing politics, it also exposed the contradictions within our so-called secular and left-wing political circles.The student organisations that waved the red flag at JNU held countless rallies in Najeeb’s name, held sit-in protests, raised slogans through the night: “Najeeb teri judayi ka, badla lenge pai ka (We will avenge your separation, Najeeb)”, in every vein. But as the years passed, Najeeb’s name remained only a catchphrase of electoral posters. When the fire of the movement cooled and the faces of student politics climbed the steps of parliament and legislative assemblies, Fatima Nafees was left alone in the corridors of the court. Only a few sympathetic lawyers and a handful of young people remained with her.As a Muslim community, we too must look into our own collars. Did we organise our people’s strength in such a way that government could be compelled to search for Najeeb? When an Akhlaq, a Junaid, or a Najeeb becomes a target, we mourn on social media for a few days, offer prayers after a few Friday prayers, and then return to our everyday lives. We have no legal or institutional infrastructure that can give a victim’s family the courage to fight a legal and financial battle against state oppression for a decade. We made Fatima Nafees an ‘icon’, but we could not give her the strength that could look power in the eye and force it to reveal the truth.An open woundA fundamental flaw of the law is that it equates ‘procedure’ with ‘justice’. The court’s statement, “The CBI has done its best and there is no new evidence, so the case is closed,” may be technically correct. But what kind of jurisprudence is this?If a human being cannot vanish from the earth into the sky, then where did he go?Why did the country’s top investigating agency fail to connect the dots between the violence in the hostel room on the night of October 14 and his disappearance on the morning of October 15?Until these questions are answered, a magistrate’s signature may close this case but this is an open wound on society’s conscience. In a democratic country, when a student leaves his university hostel after being beaten and never returns, no citizen of that country – regardless of religion – can claim that their child is safe.What will we remember?In 2026, when we talk of a digital and developed India, where every citizen has an Aadhaar card, facial recognition cameras line every street, and every phone’s location is tracked in the blink of an eye, Najeeb’s disappearance for 10 years cannot be a technological compulsion. It must be a political and institutional choice. As a Muslim, Najeeb’s disappearance isn’t just an old newspaper headline for me. He is my brother in faith who came to Delhi with dreams of higher education. His fate reveals destiny of countless Muslim youth who dare to walk with their heads held high.Courts can close their diaries, governments can wash their hands of the matter, and JNU’s Mahi-Mandvi hostel can fill with new faces every year. But until the question, “Where is Najeeb?” continues to linger in the air, no institution of the Indian democracy can claim innocence.Fatima Nafees’s moist eyes and her white dupatta are not merely a symbol of a son’s longing; they are a slap on the face of this country’s institutions.Azam Khan is an independent researcher, writer, poet and social worker with a keen interest in politics, constitutional law, citizenship, minority rights and social justice. He studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.