This is How the Bulwark of Kashmiri Separatism was Locked Up

New Delhi: Even before India abrogated Article 370, many of Kashmir top separatists were either put under detention or house arrest. It was a smart pincer move to ensure that these rogue elements didn’t raise Cain and manufacture trouble as is their won't.

In a calibrated and systematic intelligence agencies run operation coordinated by NSA Ajit Doval in conjunction with the newly appointed Union Home Minister Amit Shah, all these malevolent separatists were locked down, cutting the head of the snake to ensure that control of ground zero remained with the Valley’s security apparatus.

Many wonders where are Syed Ali Shah Geelani and company, as Kashmir increasingly appears to embrace the changed political reality. The dragnet necessitated that the hawks were put under detention so that they did not foment trouble and this has worked like clockwork.

S.A.S. Geelani, the senior-most Hurriyat ideologue, has been kept in the confines of his two-storey Hyderpora residence. Someone who gave many a shutdown calls before and after terrorist Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces in 2018 is now left incommunicado at his house. Meanwhile, his son-in-law Altaf Fantoosh is lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi for his anti-India activities, a case lodged by NIA making his life miserable.

Meanwhile, another top Joint Resistance Leadership separatist leader Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, who is facing a money-laundering investigation, is in his Nigeen Lake residence. His wife Sheeba Masoodi along with his daughters are, however, safely away in the United States.

Interestingly, Mirwaiz, who is also the head of the Jamia mosque in Srinagar, didn’t spew any anti-India venom after the Friday prayers as many expected. To the contrary, he has reportedly chosen to sermonise about drug abuse, leaving many to wonder whether he too has toned down his rhetoric. But leopards don’t change their spots and the house arrest may have had a sobering effect on him.

Yasin Malik was a dreaded name at the height of militancy when he presided over ethnic cleansing of Pandits from the Valley and gunned down four Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in cold blood. He was a part of the notorious HAJY gang comprising Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javed Ahmed Mir and himself who were also election agents of Muhammad Yusuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin who won (but was declared lost) in the infamous 1987 ‘rigged’ election.

Meanwhile, other players like Abdul Gani Bhat is kept arrested in his Wazir Bagh residence. Maulana Abbas Ansari, the Shia leader in the Sunni dominated ecosystem of Kashmir, has been a vocal anti-India voice. Right now he is in Chhattabal.

Bitta Karate or Farooq Ahmed Dar was a name that evoked strong fear in the nineties. Someone who had accepted on television interviews of killing multiple Kashmiri Pandits to enforce an Ethno centrist genocide is today a prisoner in Tihar.

Nayeem Ahmed Khan, the Chairman of Jammu Kashmir National Front and provincial President of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, is another vitriolic speaking machine who is now booked under money laundering charges and giving company to his fellow jihadists in Tihar. He is the same man who was stung in an operation where he had accepted that he used to get money from Pakistan to fuel unrest in the Valley, even if that meant burning down of schools.

Kashmir has been a playground for these forces all these years. They had the audacity and wherewithal to abduct the daughter of a sitting Home Minister of the Union of India and could unfurl a Pakistani flag on 14th August and release videos from unknown locations in the Valley espousing Islamic jihad. Today all of them are either behind bars or left cut off in their homes as Kashmir and Kashmiris welcome a new dawn of hope, opportunity and equality. (IANS)

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