Maulana Shaukat murder accused Abdullah Gazali, Bil Papa disowned by TM

After Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen too regards Srinagar Police investigation

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Aug 29: In a significant development, militant outfit Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TM) has disowned two of its key functionaries, Abdullah Gazali and Bil Papa, who have been charged by Srinagar District Police with killing of cleric-politician Maulana Shaukat Shah. President of Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadith (JAH) Jammu and Kashmir, Maulana Shaukat had died in an IED blast at a mosque in Maisuma locality here on April 8^th this year.

JAH President and head of the separatists’ SIT, Maulana Ghulam Rasool Malik, today released TM’s letter which indirectly corroborated involvement of its key functionaries, Abdul Gani Dar alias Abdullah Gazali of Russu, Budgam, and Javed Munshi alias Bil Papa of Chhanapora, Srinagar, in Maulana Shaukat’s assassination in April. On August 26^th, Malik had released a letter from another formidable militant organisation, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, which also confirmed Srinagar District Police investigation, described Javed Munshi as the key assassin but claimed that LeT’s Kashmir-based Pakistani commander Abdullah Yuni was not involved in the heinous crime.

According to the TM letter, addressed to the separatists’ SIT, Abdul Gani Dar as well as Javed Munshi had served as key functionaries of the organisation in the past but neither of them had remained associated with the guerrilla group since long. It claimed that a four-member investigating team of the organisation, comprising Abdul Shakoor Azad, Owais Sajjad, Mohammad Shahid Salfi and Abu Hamza, had conducted a thorough investigation into Maulana Shaukat’s assassination, though the investigators were not in a position to interact with the men arrested by Police and detained in jail.

TM has sought to make it clear that Dar had been arrested in 2001 after working with the outfit for several years. After his release from jail, he joined a political outfit, titled “Sautul Haq” and became its head. In Sautul Haq, Dar developed differences with a colleague, namely Bashir Ahmad Sofi, and was subsequently dismissed as head of the new organisation. Text of the letter claimed that TM’s Pakistan-based  supremo, Sheikh Jamil-ur-Rehman called Dar only once over telephone when latter’s brother passed away six months before Shaukat’s murder. It claimed that TM supremo Sheikh Jamil-ur-Rehman called Dar twice or thrice (from across LoC) after Maulana’s killing and enquired about the murder and resultant mourning in Kashmir.

While claiming that the organisation had never thought in terms of carrying out the assassination, it suggested SIT to scan call detail records of Dar’s telephone. “If there is even a single word against Maulana Shaukat from Sheikh Jamil-ur-Rehman, we will accept the crime and its punishment”, said the TM letter.

The letter also confirmed that Javed Munshi had for years worked for TM but claimed that, like Dar, he too had ceased his association with the outfit after his arrest in Katmandu, Nepal, in 1998. It claimed that Javed had visited Nepal in 1998 without the permission of his leadership to meet his relatives and friends. He, however, got arrested and was released after 8 years. Thereafter, he made three attempts to cross over to other side of the LoC from Kashmir but was each time arrested and released by forces and Police.

The letter asserted that neither the outfit chief Sheikh Jamil-ur-Rehman nor the organisation had any contact with Javed Munshi since 2009 when he issued threats over telephone to a TM functionary Owais Sajjad. It asserted that TM would own the crime and accept its punishment in case it was proved in any investigation or call detail record of telephones that the orgainsation or its leadership had any contact or association with Javed Munshi in the last over two years.

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