Srinagar: Wives of Kashmiri men who have disappeared during the region's long-running conflict should be allowed to remarry once four years have elapsed since their spouses went missing, Islamic scholars have ruled.
The religious edict issued on Thursday is designed to ease the plight of more than a thousand so-called 'half widows' who have been left in limbo since their husbands disappeared in parts of Kashmir controlled by India.
"These women should have to wait only four years for their husbands and if they fail to get any information by that time then they are free to remarry," said the edict by a local panel of religious scholars.
The edict still needs the seal of approval from religious leaders before it becomes a binding fatwa, one of the members of the panel said on condition of anonymity.
But Khurram Pervaiz of the Coalition of Civil Societies, which has conducted surveys on the numbers of disappeared, said the move could benefit some 1,500 half-widows.
As their husbands are not officially recognised as dead, the women face huge obstacles in getting access to ration cards or their spouses' bank accounts and thus become dependent on their parents or in-laws.
Rights groups say as many as 8,000 people, mostly young men, have been "disappeared" by Indian security forces in Kashmir since an armed insurgency erupted in the Muslim-majority region in 1989.
The Indian military and Kashmir's police deny extra-judicial killings while the civilian authorities argue that most of those listed as missing may have crossed over to Pakistan-held Kashmir.
Kashmir, a strikingly picturesque Himalayan region, has been the subject of two of the three wars fought by regional rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947.
