Nearly a week after her son Zubair Lone was buried at a sprawling cemetery—designated exclusively for militants—Sara Lone couldn’t take it anymore. Walking through a thick carpet of snow on January 4, she came out to demand that his body be returned to the family.

“I don’t know what they did to him?” a wailing Sara told newsmen at Srinagar’s Press Enclave during a protest staged by the families of three youths killed in an alleged fake encounter in Lawaypora on Srinagar-Baramulla highway on December 30.

Twenty-two-year-old Zubair, along with two others—Athar Mushtaq Wani, 17, and Aijaz Maqbool Ganai, 21—fell to army bullets in an abandoned house in Lawaypora.

Their families, however, allege that the encounter was fake.