Hurriyat leader Prof Gani tells ‘truth’ after 21 years

‘Our own militants killed Mirwaiz Farooq, Ab Gani Lone, Dr Ahad Wani etc’

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jan 2: Separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference’s senior leader and former Chairman, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, today dropped a veritable bombshell when he said at a JKLF seminar that it were Kashmiri militants, not the Indian Army or Police, who had killed intellectuals and leaders like Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq, Abdul Gani Lone and Prof Abdul Ahad Wani. He said that he had advised Valley’s traders not to respond to calls of some radical leaders but they ‘unfortunately’ observed shutdown for five long months of year 2010 and multiplied the miseries of the Kashmiris.

Five years after telling some naked truths of Kashmir’s separatist movement at a function organized on the premises of ‘Azad Jammu & Kashmir Assembly’ at Muzaffarabad, founder-leader of Hurriyat in 1993 and founder-Chairman of Muslim United Front in 1986, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, today disclosed publicly in Srinagar that most of the Kashmiri intellectuals, scholars, clergymen and political leaders had been eliminated by none other than “our own people”. Addressing JKLF-sponsored seminar on 20^th death anniversary of then Professor at Department of Law, Kashmir University, and a separatist ideologue, Prof Abdul Ahad Wani, Gani directly held the Kashmiri militants responsible for killing men like Awami Action Committee Chairman, Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq, Hurriyat’s founder member and Chairman of Peoples Conference, Abdul Gani Lone, and Prof Abdul Ahad Wani.

“Lone Sahib, Mirwaiz Farooq and Prof Wani were not killed by Army or police. They were targeted by our own people. Story is long one but we have to tell the truth,” he said. He said that the Kashmiri politicians and militants had started the separatist movement with “killing our own intellectuals”. “Was Prof Wani martyr of brilliance or martyr of rivalry, we must ask ourselves today”, Prof Gani said.

Prof Gani, who played most important role in launching MUF as well as Hurriyat after teaching Persian language and literature for more than 25 years at Government Degree College Sopore, is famous for his style of making sensational revelations. He had jumped into active politics and launched MUF after then Governor Jagmohan terminated his service for ‘preaching secessionism’ and becoming ‘threat to the nation’s security’. Even when he was operating as a senior Hurriyat leader, militants---allegedly of Hizbul Mujahideen---had gunned down Prof Bhat’s brother at his residential village of Botengo in Sopore-Bandipore belt.

Prof Bhat’s sensational revelation came very much in the presence of the two slain leaders’ sons---Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Bilal Gani Lone--- who remained tightlipped and did not react to their senior colleague’s assertion. Some of the family members and relatives of the slain academic Prof Wani were also in attendance at the seminar. They too remained noncommittal.

Prof Bhat’s disclosures, coming first time from a senior Hurriyat’s mouth, are significant in the sense that he and invariably all of his separatist colleagues and militant outfits have been holding the Indian security forces responsible for all of these assassinations. Bhat asserted in unambiguous terms today that neither the Indian armed forces nor the state Police were involved in such killings.

Influential cleric-politician, Mirwaiz Farooq, had been gunned down by unidentified assassins at his Nageen residence on May 21, 1990. Prof Ahad Wani was kidnapped by some gunmen from KU’s Department of Law on January 2, 1991, and hours later his bullet-riddled body was spotted at a deserted place outside the university premises where Professors’ Colony has now come up in the last few years. Once a Minister and MLA from Handwara, Lone was gunned down at Mirwaiz Farooq’s 12rth death anniversary function at Eidgah Grounds on May 21, 2002. All the three killings happened in broad daylight.

Taking potshots on the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani and “the journalists and columnists who catapulted him to a meteoric rise”, Prof Bhat asserted that many of the Valley’s politicians and intellectuals had made the life of ordinary Kashmiris miserable. “On one hand, he (Geelani) refuses to talk to India and on the other hand he takes pleasure in meeting with the Indian Parliamentarians. These dichotomies and contradictions have to go. When we initiated talks with New Delhi, we were labeled as Kafir (non-believers) and when you talk, it’s no problem!” he said.

Prof Bhat made yet another sensational disclosure that during the thick of last year’s street demonstrations and unending shutdowns, he had implored the Valley traders not to listen to calls from radicals but it was “utterly unfortunate” that they multiplied the miseries of the hapless Kashmiris by keeping their businesses shut for five long months. He cautioned that emotion-driven acts and decisions would lead the Kashmiris to nowhere.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Bilal Gani Lone, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik, Dean University of Kashmir Prof Noor Ahmed Baba, Pediatrician Dr Altaf , Dr Zaffar Mehdi and Jamiat Ahli Hadees chief Maulana Shaukat Shah and eminent lawyer Zaffar Shah were among a large numbers of speakers on the occasion. Almost all of them demonized the Indian state as oppressor and suppressor and asserted that all of the Kashmiris were for separation from India. Malik referred to some recent incidents of “attacks” on Mirwaiz and other separatist leaders and claimed that the Indian intellectual opinion was fast turning in favour of the Kashmiris and “their just struggle for Azadi”.

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