Former Chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat was laid to rest at his ancestral graveyard in Kashmir’s Sopore.
A well-known figure, Prof. Bhat passed away on Wednesday evening at his residence in Botingoo, Sopore, at the age of 94. Bhat had been suffering from a prolonged illness and had been away from the public eye since 2020.
After his death, various political leaders sent their condolences. However, the authorities allegedly imposed curbs on some political leaders in the valley by placing them under house arrest on Thursday.
Known for his role in separatist politics and as an advocate of dialogue between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, Bhat was also president of the Muslim Conference, affiliated with the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference. The outfit was banned following the reading down of Article 370 in 2019.
Bhat held a postgraduate degree in Persian and a bachelor’s degree in law from Aligarh Muslim University. He was co-founder of the Muslim United Front (MUF), which contested the controversial 1987 assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir, widely believed to have sparked the armed insurgency in Kashmir in the early 1990s.
On Thursday and Friday, the Hurriyat leader’s family alleged that security forces sealed the village after his demise to prevent mourners from participating in the last rites. The allegations were denied by police officials in the region.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
