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2 years on, Hazratbal cleric moves HC for reinstatement
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court on Tuesday sought responses from the J&K Waqf Board and Union Territory administration on a petition filed by Kamal-ud-Din Farooqui seeking his reinstatement as the Imam of Kashmir’s most revered shrine — Dargah Hazratbal— from where he was removed in 2024 following a conversion row
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Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court on Tuesday sought responses from the J&K Waqf Board and Union Territory administration on a petition filed by Kamal-ud-Din Farooqui seeking his reinstatement as the Imam of Kashmir’s most revered shrine — Dargah Hazratbal— from where he was removed in 2024 following a conversion row.
Farooqui, 74, was disengaged by the Waqf Board from leading the prayers after his video presiding over a public conversion of a Hindu man from Haryana to Islam went viral, prompting an FIR for allegedly ‘causing disorder in society and hurting religious sentiments of people’. The waqf board, led by BJP leader Darakshan Andrabi, alleged that due process was not followed and issued an order forming a three-member committee on April 8, 2024, to probe the matter and submit a report in seven days. Two years on, the board has neither made its inquiry report public nor reinstated Farooqui.
Farooqui filed the petition in the high court on September 10 against the April 08, 2024, Waqf Board order, which was listed for hearing on Tuesday.
Justice M Yousuf issued the notices to the respondents, including the J&K administration and the J&K Waqf Board and gave them four weeks to file a reply. The counsel for the J&K Waqf Board was also present and received the notice.
“The court issued notices to the respondents,” the counsel for the petitioner said.
“Somebody had accepted Islam as a religion. What was Farooqui’s role in that? His name is not in the FIR. The court heard our arguments,” he said.
The petition said that despite the lapse of considerable time, no inquiry report or final decision has been furnished to the petitioner, and the temporary restraint (to continue as Imam) has continued indefinitely without any finding of misconduct.
“The petitioner is a professor emeritus and senior religious scholar who has rendered religious service for several decades, and his continued exclusion is causing grave and recurring injury to his dignity, reputation and religious standing,” the petition said.
Farooqui, a prominent academician and scientist at Sher-e Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology and retired as a professor, has said that his family has been performing the duties of dargah’s imam for the past three centuries and that the religious legacy of his forefathers will be lost if he is not reinstated. He took over as the imam in 2018 after his brother’s death.
With a doctorate in plant breeding and genetics from the French University of Bordeaux, Farooqui used to deliver sermons at Dargah on important religious occasions.
“The petitioner belongs to the Farooqui family, whose association with Aasar-i-Shareef Dargah Hazratbal is stated to extend over several centuries,” the petition said.
The alleged conversion took place on the last Friday of Ramzan on April 5, 2024, in the presence of thousands of people. The video showed Farooqui questioning the man on whether he was coerced or bribed to convert, to which the man responded in the negative.
The police registered a case and named a local, Inayat Muntazir, in whose house the man was working as a domestic helper. The case was filed under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc.), 153 (giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 298 (uttering words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) and 188 (disobedience to order promulgated by a public servant) of the Indian Penal Code. Farooqui was not named in the FIR.
