Maulana killed for proximity to JKLF, meeting with interlocutors?

Police suspecting Jameel-ur-Rehman’s Saut-ul-Haq for cleric’s assassination

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Apr 12: Government has constituted a Special Investigating Team (SIT), headed by SDPO Kothibagh Abdul Jabbar, to identify and apprehend the killers of Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith chief, Maulana Shaukat Ahmed Shah. Even as Police are still groping in the dark, the “moderate” cleric’s proximity to JKLF Chairman, Yasin Malik---that had remarkably grown in the last two years--- besides the former’s two secret meetings with the Government of India’s interlocutors on Jammu and Kashmir in New Delhi, are believed to have caused the assassination here on April 8^th.

Ballistic analysis of the substances, according to informed sources, has not led Police to any clues with regard to identity of the killers, their organisation or objective. According to these sources, the SIT headed by the young IPS officer, was almost certain that the IED blast on Friday last had been caused by an “insider” with the help of his mobile phone. All incoming and outgoing calls, handled by towers of different telecommunication companies in Maisuma and adjoining areas between 1100 hrs and 1400 hrs on the fateful day, are currently under scanner.

Officials of extensive counter-insurgency exposure in Srinagar are hopeful of a breakthrough in next one week. Sources said that the investigators were working on a host of theories, including the Maulana-led outfit’s hostility with two radical organizations over his proximity to JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik, and Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith’s in-house factional feud.

Officials are also attempting to know whether the slain cleric’s two secret meetings with the interlocutors in New Delhi earlier this year had become any reason behind his assassination. Interlocutors Daleep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari had interacted twice with the cleric in New Delhi to get a first-hand account of his “moderate ideology” on the Kashmir problem, well-placed authoritative sources disclosed to Early Times.

None of the prominent separatist leaders has publicly met with the team of interlocutors ever since it was constituted by the union Home Ministry over Prime Minister’s advice in October 2010. Most of the separatist leaders have laid preconditions like declaring J&K as a “disputed territory”, releasing of all political detainees and relocation of troops---something not acceptable to New Delhi at this stage.

Based on “rough findings” of an investigation into a grenade attack on Maulana’s residence at Lal Bazar in 2008, Police officials are understood to be scanning the activities of a radical group of militants. Militants had thrown red colour and scribbled “Saut-ul-Haq” on the floor before lobbing the grenade on Maulana’s house three years back. The breakaway group’s head, Jameel-ur-Rehman, who is  a resident of Pulwama district, according to officials, was based in Karachi, Pakistan, for the last over three years.

Meanwhile, Jamiat’s officiating Chairman, Ghulam Rasool Malik, has organized an “all-party meeting” at the organisation’s headquarters here on Wednesday. All the separatist leaders, including heads of both factions of Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik, and heads of almost all the religious organizations have been invited for participation. The meeting would pay tributes to the slain cleric and discuss security related issues concerning the religious leadership in Kashmir.

On the host’s request, Government has made elaborate security arrangements for the meeting that would be followed by a news conference.

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