Samenvatting

Along with the rich and often tumultuous history, the state of Jammu and Kashmir has also experienced enforced disappearances, giving birth to another category of victims as a consequence of political conflict – the half-widows of Kashmir. The term ‘half-widows’ describes women whose husbands have disappeared but not yet been declared dead. The article proposes to analyse the orchestrated-limbo, defined by the intersectionality and compounding of how stigma, shaming and violence take shape in the context of gender relations in India. It seeks to answer how and why an implicit western lens may fall short in understanding criminological problems outside the western realm.