Jailed Kashmiri separatist leader ‘Sehrai’ dead
Jailed leader was a confidant of separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani
Kashmiri separatist leader Muhammad Ashraf Khan ‘Sehrai’ died in a Jammu hospital on Wednesday, a day after he was shifted there from a jail of garrison town of Udhampur.
77-year-old Sehrai who was a close confidante of separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani and replaced him as the chief of Tehrik-e-Hurriyat (TeH), Jammu and Kashmir was arrested by the J&K police on July 12 last year and subsequently detained under the Union Territory’s stringent Public Safety Act.
Dr. A.D.S. Manhas. Medical Superintendent of Jammu’s Government
Medical College Hospital said that Sehrai’s rapid test for Covid-19 had come negative but his swab came positive for the pathogen after his death, local news agency GNS reported quoting official sources.
The hospital sources said that the oxygen level of Sehrai who was suffering from multiple ailments had dropped to 63 on Wednesday morning.
His family here claimed that despite its repeated requests to release him or, at least, shift him to a good hospital in view of his poor health he was left unattended in jail. “His health has only deteriorated in jail but he was left unattended by the authorities till his condition worsened on Tuesday,” it said.
The TeH, virtually a breakaway wing of Sehra and Geelani’s parent organisation Jamaat-eIslami launched by them in 2004 after reaching an “agreement with the Jamaat, is the dominant constituent of the Hurriyat Conference faction which was until last year being led by Geelani.
However, feeling hurt at being sidelined in certain decision-making and underhand disparagement of his role within the amalgam, nonagenarian Geelani on June 29, 2020 announced his decision to quit the Hurriyat Conference. Sehrai was considered to be a strong contender to take over as chief of the Hurriyat Conference (Geelani) faction.
His son Junaid Ashraf, a divisional commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, was among two militants killed in a gunfight with security forces in Srinagar on May 19 last year. He had gone missing on March 23, 2018, days after his father had taken over as chairman of the TeH.
Sehrai’s death in Jammu hospital has been widely condoled by Kashmir’s mainstream and separatist parties and leaders alike, all urging the government to release all political leaders languishing in jails in and outside J&K in view of the alarming pandemic situation.
Former chief minister and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president, Mehbooba Mufti, tweeted, “Deeply saddened to know about Ashraf Sehrai Sahib’s sudden death. Like him, countless political prisoners & other detainees from Kashmir continue to be jailed purely for their ideologies & thought process. In today’s India one pays a price with his life for dissent.”
She also said, “The least GOI can do in such dangerous circumstances is to immediately release these detainees on parole so that they return home to their families” .
The Hurriyat Conference faction led by Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq alleged that given his age and health condition and yet being incarcerated Sehrai has fallen prey to the “inhumane attitude of the authorities”. It said, “We are pained by his demise. Despite repeated appeals to release political prisoners lodged in various jails on humanitarian grounds in view of the devastating Covid catastrophe, authorities are playing with their lives”. The amalgam asserted that the people of J&K have lost a “sincere, able and an honest leader” in his death.