New Delhi, March 23 (PTI): Yasin Malik-led Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, which was banned by the government on Friday, was the first terrorist group to raise the slogan of ‘azadi’ in the state and among its first targets was a BJP leader, a Kashmiri Pandit, in 1989, officials said.
The JKLF was responsible for a litany of terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir since 1980s.
Raising the slogan of ‘azadi’, the group targeted Kashmiri Pandits, government employees and ordinary, peace-loving Kashmiri people, a security official said.
The JKLF targeted a Kashmiri Pandit for the first time on September 14, 1989 when it killed Pandit Tikalal Taploo, the state BJP vice president, in front of several people, a security official said.
The terror group was also involved in the blasts at three government buildings, including the Telegraph Office in Srinagar, on August 1, 1988.
JKLF terrorists killed Mohammad Yousuf Halwai, a local leader of the National Conference, in Srinagar on August 17, 1989 and shot dead retired sessions judge N K Ganjoo, who had sentenced JKLF leader Maqbool Butt to death, on October 4, 1989, the official said.
The terror group also kidnapped Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, when she was returning home from a hospital in Srinagar on December 8, 1989.
She was released five days later, on December 13, in exchange of the release of five JKLF terrorists from jail.
Four IAF officers were killed by the terror outfit on January 25, 1990 when they were waiting at a bus stop along with their family members at Natipora in Srinagar.
Twelve family members of the IAF personnel were also injured in the attack. Two of them later died in a hospital, another official said.
A chargesheet in this case was filed in Jammu TADA court against Yasin Malik, the prime accused, and six others.
Malik tried all methods in the book to escape the trial and moved a petition in 2008 for transfer of the case to Srinagar which was rejected, the official said.
Against this order, he approached the Jammu and Kashmir High Court through a writ petition. For one reason or the other, hearing on this writ petition could not be completed till March 2019.
The Union Home Ministry and the Jammu and Kashmir administration pursued the matter relentlessly and on
March 13, 2019, the high court dismissed Malik’s plea to transfer the trial to Srinagar.
Trial in this case is expected to resume soon in Jammu, the official said.
The JKLF continues to abet stone pelting in Jammu and Kashmir, indulge in money laundering, provide financial and logistic support to separatist groups and glorify terrorist activities.
The JKLF was declared an unlawful association yesterday by the central government. Crackdown on the JKLF is a sign that the Centre will not tolerate separatist activities in Jammu and Kashmir, while it keeps its doors open for all those peace-loving Kashmir people for dialogue, the official said.
Malik is currently in a jail in Jammu.
Separatists on Saturday said the Centre’s decision to ban Jammu and Kashmir Liberatation Front headed by Yasin Malik was “undemocratic” and “political vendetta”.
Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), an amalgam of separatist groups, called for a general strike on Sunday to protest against the ban imposed by the government on the JKLF.
“The Government of India’s decision of banning the JKLF for five years is highly authoritarian, autocratic and pure political vendetta,” the JRL said in a statement.
The JRL urged people of Kashmir to observe a complete shutdown on March 24 against “the arbitrary and undemocratic decision” of the government.
“The way Government of India is announcing bans and crackdowns on the organizations associated with the Kashmir struggle, arresting the leadership and slapping them with draconian PSA, killing youth in custody .... exposes their hollow claims of democracy,” it said.
This is the second organisation in Jammu and Kashmir which has been banned this month. Earlier, the Centre had banned the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir.
The Yasin Malik-led JKLF was banned on Friday for a series of violent acts and being in the forefront of separatist activities in the militancy-hit state since 1988, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba had said.
Listing out its subversive and violent activities, Gauba said the JKLF spearheaded the separatist ideology in Kashmir Valley and the action was taken following the “zero tolerance” policy of the central government against terrorism.
Malik is at present lodged in Kot Balwal jail in Jammu, and is likely to face trial in the three-decade-old case of kidnapping of Rubaya Sayeed and gunning down of four IAF personnel in Srinagar.
The JKLF was founded by Pakistani national Amanullah Khan in mid-1970 at Birmingham in the United Kingdom and came into prominence in 1971 when its member hijacked an Indian Airlines plane flying from Srinagar to Jammu.
A total of 37 FIRs have been registered by the Jammu and Kashmir Police against JKLF and two cases, including that of murder of IAF personnel, were registered by the CBI.
The organisation was also involved in the kidnapping and killing of Ravindra Mhatre, an Indian diplomat posted the UK, in 1984. A week later, India executed Maqbool Bhat, a JKLF activist, who had been sentenced to death.
