Maulana Shaukat killing probe creates ripples in Kashmir

Separatist outfit calls members of 10-member panel as “India’s and America’s agents”

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Aug 27: Dismissing members of the 10-member separatist panel, who claim to have completed investigation into the assassination of Maulana Shaukat Shah, as “agents” of India and United States of America, one of the constituents of Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference has claimed that Javed Munshi alias Bil Papa was not involved in the Kashmiri cleric-politician’s murder. Raising fingers, directly and indirectly, on the JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik and Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, “Tehreek-e-Shariat-e-Islami” has also alleged that some separatist leaders were working on behalf of New Delhi and their objective was to hold the militants responsible for each and every killing in Jammu and Kashmir.

Chairman of Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadith (JAH) Maulana Shaukat was killed in a bomb blast on April 8^th this year when he was, as per a routine, entering a mosque in the uptown Maisuma locality to perform Friday afternoon prayers. Parallel to Police investigation, a conclave of almost all the separatist groups constituted a 10-member panel on April 18th to investigate the target killing. JAH’s new supremo Maulana Ghulam Rasool Malik, headed the investigation team. Heads of both factions of Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, were declared as its members.

JAH General Secretary Abdul Rehman Bhat, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sheikh Mohammad Hassan, Anjuman Sharyee head Aga Syed Hassan, Anjuman Ittihadul Muslimeen chief Maulana Abbas Ansari, Islamic Study Circle representative Dr Yousaf-al-Umar and Maulvi Shaukat Ahmed Keng, were declared as members of the panel.

In the last over three months of investigation, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Srinagar District Police arrested five to six persons and claimed that they had planned, ordered and carried out the operation of eliminating Maulana Shaukat. They included Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TM) key functionaries Abdul Gani Dar alias Abdullah Gazali of Russu, Budgam, and Javed Munshi alias Bil Papa of Chhanapora, Srinagar. Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen’s detained supremo Ashiq Hussain Faktoo alias Dr Qasim was also initially indicted but his name was dropped in the end. Challan was accordingly produced in a court in Srinagar.

On August 25^th, head of the separatist panel and President of JAH, Maulana Ghulam Rasool Malik, released a letter, he claimed to have received from Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. The communication, significantly, corroborated the J&K Police investigation in part, confirming that Javed Munshi alias Bil Papa had revealed to Lashkar’s detenues in Srinagar Central Jail that he and others of his associates in TM had killed Shaukat in the bomb blast. More significantly, the Lashkar letter claimed that Javed Munshi had also been planning to eliminated Shaukat’s close friend and JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik.

Lashkar, however, labeled Javed Munshi and his associates as “double cross”, claiming that they had been roped in by agencies of the government of India. It claimed that Javed had bungled a quantity of explosives and weapons and also helped Army in conducting certain operations in which some militants got killed. Lashkar, however, gave a clean chit to its Kashmir-based Pakistani commander Abdullah Yuni who was a prime accused in the Police challan.

With the Lashkar letter, released by Maulana Malik, creating ripples in Kashmir valley, Tehreek-e-Shariat-e-Islami today shot a statement, dismissing the 10-member team investigation as an operation controlled by Indian and American agencies. It said that most of these members had become “slaves of the Indian, American and Israeli agencies” even before the separatist movement began in Kashmir in 1988-89. It alleged that these leaders had been “thrust upon the Kashmiris under compulsion”.

While ignoring reference and negative insinuation to Geelani, Tehreek statement made it clear that the organisation was treating just a few of the individuals as the real leaders of the separatist movement. It named them as Ashraf Sehrai, Massarat Alam Bhat, Advocate Mian Abdul Qayoom, Asiya Andrabi, Bilal Sidiquee, Mohammad Ahsan Ontoo, Feroz Ahmad Sheikh and Hafizullah Mir.

The organisation alleged, directly and indirectly, that men like Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar were operating on behalf of the Indian and American agencies and their objective in the current investigation was to establish that all killings, abductions and rapes were the handiwork of separatist militants in Kashmir in the last two decades. This would give a clean chit to the Indian forces, the statement contended. It further claimed that members of the investigation team had got full facilitation from Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi and they had conveyed their report to Delhi and Washington much before it was released to press on August 25^th.

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