15,000 attend funeral of Hizb commander

ir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Doda, January 16

Thousands of people today turned up for the funeral procession of top Hizbul Mujahiddin commander Haroon Abbas Wani, alias Moin-ul-Islam, at his native village Ghat in the district.

It was an unprecedented procession as never before so many people have attended funeral procession of a militant in the area. Despite the restrictions imposed by the administration as Section 144 of the CrPC was in place in Doda town and all roads leading to Ghat village were blocked to stop movement of people towards the village, people from neighbouring villages and Doda town took difficult routes to reach the village.

Ghat village is situated 5 km east of the district headquarters and no vehicle movement was allowed till afternoon. Once a mob of over 1,000 youth gathered and headed towards Doda town, the administration lifted the restrictions and allowed people to move towards Ghat village from Doda town.

“In the meantime, some youth vandalised the property of a few shopkeepers and broke the windowpanes of a few vehicles in Doda, but the administration kept restraints,” said a senior police officer.

Wani was killed during an encounter with security forces in the Tantna area of Gundna tehsil in the district yesterday and his killing was the major setback to the revival of militancy in the district. He was an associate of slain HM commander Osama, who was killed during the Batote encounter last year. The police said he was involved in the killing of RSS leader Chanderkant Sharma in Kishtwar.

He had done MBA from Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University and was working with a pharmaceutical company in Jammu before joining the militant ranks on September 1, 2018. Security forces were seeing him as a major militant reviving militancy in the district.

Meanwhile, in Ghat village, due to the huge rush of people, the ‘janaza’ of the slain HM commander was offered four times and people kept coming and going.

This was after a gap of around 15 years that a local militant from Ghat village was killed and never before such a huge procession was held in the history of the village. Locals said more than 15,000 people attended the funeral procession, despite restrictions being in place. Last evening after the police handed over the body of the slain militant to his family, a procession of around 10,000 people took him to his home from Doda. As the administration and police kept restraints, no person was either detained or injured and last rites of the militant passed off peacefully.