Located amid the idyllic landscape of forest-fringed paddy fields with a clear view of the mountains, the village of Mawar in Kupwara district, is abuzz. Mawar, located in the Langata area, is where Engineer Rashid, Kashmir’s political flavour of the season, hails from. In the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, Rashid defeated heavyweights like former chief minister and National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah and Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference candidate Sajjad Lone, in the battle for the prestigious Baramulla constituency. Unlike his defeated opponents, Rashid was—and continues to be— incarcerated in connection with a 2019 Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case.