Syed Ali Shah Geelani passes away
Kashmiri separatist leader was under house detention for past several years
Kashmiri separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani passed away after a prolonged illness at his Srinagar residence late Wednesday night. He was 91. Family sources said Geelani, who was suffering from multiple ailments, complained of severe chest pain in the evening and soon breathed his last at 10.30 pm. “He had chest congestion and breathing problems and his condition worsened by this evening,” the sources said.
He was under house detention for the past several years. Born on September 29, 1929, in Zurimanz village outside the Valley’s north-western town of Sopore, Geelani headed a faction of separatist Hurriyat Conference alliance till June 2020.
The Hurriyat Conference, formed way back in early 1990s to forge unity among various separatist organisations and “present a cohesive voice before the world”, split in 2002 over a variety of issues, the main being alleged “soft attitude” shown by so-called moderate amalgam leaders towards Peoples’ Conference leader Sajad Gani Lone and “ignoring” his “propensity” towards the mainstream camp. The other faction of the Hurriyat Conference is being headed by Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq since.
A hardcore proPakistan Kashmiri politicians, Geelani was previously a member of Jama'at-e-Islami, the right-wing organisation banned by the Union home ministry a couple of years ago. He, after quitting the Jamaat, founded his own Tehrike-Hurriyat party. He was replaced by his close confidante Muhammad Ashraf Khan Sehrai as the Tehrik-e-Hurriyat chief in March 2018. Sehrai died in Jammu’s Government Medical College Hospital of Covid19 on May 5 this year, a
day after he was shifted there from a jail of garrison town of Udhampur in critical condition.
Geelani was an MLA from the Sopore constituency of Jammu and Kashmir in 1972, 1977 and in 1987. Official sources said that security restrictions are being imposed in major parts of Kashmir Valley to prevent any processions or gatherings following the death of Geelani. The family sources said that they have been told that his last rites would be allowed to be held quietly in his ancestral village and only close relatives would be allowed to attend the funeral.