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Separatists break silence over NC worker’s death
The hardline Hurriyat faction, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, in a meeting on Thursday condemned the “custodial killing” of National Conference worker Syed Mohammad Yusuf, almost a week after the death.
The hardline Hurriyat faction, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, in a meeting on Thursday condemned the “custodial killing” of National Conference worker Syed Mohammad Yusuf, almost a week after the death.
“Whenever people are killed unjustly, the Hurriyat condemns that, irrespective of (which party the victim belonged to),” the party said in a statement.
“The party or ideological affiliation of the victim won’t change our abhorrence towards the ruthlessness of the act,” the statement said.
HT reported on October 4 two National Conference workers met chief minister Omar Abdullah on September 29 with a complaint that Yusuf took
R 1.2 crore as gratification for getting them membership in the legislative council and a ministerial post. Abdullah then summoned Yusuf and handed over the three to the police. In the government version, Yusuf died in hospital on September 30 of a heart attack.
However, one of the complainants said on Thursday he had met the chief minister in July and not on September 29.
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik also criticised the “duplicity of those mainstream political parties, which kept silent on the 2010 summer killings and are now raising a hue and cry over a murder”.
“A party worker of a mainstream party was allegedly killed. We condemn the killing, irrespective of his ideology,” Malik told a press conference.
“We are not against a fair probe. But a question comes to our mind why there was no hullabaloo in the assembly in 2010, when more than 110 young persons, many of them kids, were killed. Why didn’t these people take to the streets in 2008, when 62 people were killed,” Malik said in an apparent reference to the protests by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) over the death of Yusuf.
