AMP Report - February 11, 2020
Amid complete shutdown in Indian administered Kashmir
3
6th death anniversary of JKLP founder Maqbool Bhat is observed
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Amid complete shutdown in Kashmir Valley the 36th death anniversary of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder, Maqbool Bhat, was observed Tuesday (February 11). He was hanged at Tihar Jail on this day in 1984.
According to Deccan Herald, fearing protests, authorities imposed restrictions in parts of Srinagar City since morning. All the major entry and exit points to these areas have been blocked with rolls of concertina wires to prevent people from assembling at a single spot. Hundreds of police and paramilitary CRPF men in full riot gear have been deployed in sensitive areas of Srinagar.
Internet services, which were restored in Kashmir on January 25, nearly six months after the RSS-backed government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi abrogated Article 370 which conferred special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, were snapped again since Monday night.
On Sunday also, authorities had suspended the service as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent any law and order situation keeping in view it was the date when Kashmiri activist Afzal Guru was executed.
The JKLF had called for a strike on February 9 and February 11 remembering Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat respectively. 
The Kashmiri leaders have been demanding that New Delhi should handover the mortal remains of Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru, who was secretly hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013. Both remain buried inside the Tihar Jail.
The JKLF was banned by India last year as part of a massive clampdown in Kashmir. Its offices were closed and main leaders, including its chairman Yasin Malik, were detained.
Maqbool Bhat a native of North Kashmir village of Trehgam, is seen as the pioneer of Kashmiri’s resistance movement.
He was arrested in 1975 in the North Kashmir town of Handwara and taken to high-security Tihar jail in New Delhi, where he was hanged in 1984, apparently to assuage public anger over the abduction and killing of Indian diplomat Ravindra Mahatre in the U.K. by an alleged affiliate of Bhat’s JKLF.
Noted Kashmiri journalist Zafar Meraj, who was one of the few people who knew beforehand the hanging of Bhat in 1984, recalls that he had mounted a last-ditch effort to save Maqbool Bhat from the gallows.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency of Turkey, Meraj said that he had roped in noted lawyer Muzafar Hussain Beigh, currently a senior politician to plead Bhat’s case in the Supreme Court. But their efforts proved futile. Muzafar Hussain Beigh was recently conferred India’s third highest civilian award Padma Bhushan.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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