Maqbool Bhat's Brother Returns, To Head JKLF Aman

Srinagar, Feb 09, KONS

In a significant development, Zahoor Ahmad Bhat, the only surviving brother of JKLF founder, Muhammad Maqbool Bhat, has returned to Uri with his family after a twenty-year stay in Pakistan-administered-Kashmir to take the reins of the Amanullah Khan group of the JKLF. Bhat is likely to start his political activities on Maqbool's anniversary from their native village of Trehgam in Kupwara district. Sources said that Bhat, 38, returned to the valley last week along with his wife, daughter and three sons. It was not immediately clear what route Bhat had taken for the journey home. He is learned to have returned to be active on the political rather than the militant front, and he has been appointed the president of the JKLF (Aman group) in Jammu and Kashmir. Born in 1972 in the Trehgam area of Kupwara, Bhat first went across the LoC for arms training in 1988 immediately after his matriculation when he was just 16. Bhat had four brothers including Maqbool, and the when the latter escaped from the central jail in Srinagar in 1968, one of them, Habibullah, was arrested by the authorities. There was no trace of Habibullah thereafter, and his arrest is regared as the first custodial disappearance in recent Kashmir history. Later, in 1984, Maqbool was hanged in the Tihar Jail in New Delhi on February 11, and even his mortal remains were not returned to the family. Another of Bhat's brothers, Ghulam Nabi Bhat, was killed in a mysterious traffic accident in Chanpora, Srinagar in 1994. Ghulam Nabi Bhat is counted among the founders of the armed struggle in Kashmir and he had been associated with the movement since 1987. His younger brother, Manzoor, was the first JKLF divisional commander for north Kashmir, and was killed in a gun battle with the army in Trehgam on October 4, 1995.
Zahoor is thus the only surviving brother after Maqbool's hanging, Habibullah's disappearance and the death of the other two during the early years of the armed uprising in Kashmir. After going across the LoC in 1988, Zahoor was active on the militant front on his return and was arrested February 13, 1989. But immediately on his release on January 17, 1990, he went across the dividing line once again. During his stay in Muzaffarabad, Zahoor was active on the diplomatic and the political front under the banner of the Aman group of the JKLF and played an active role in the rehabilitation of Kashmiris across the LoC. He was the general secretary of the Refugee Welfare Organization till 2002, after which he was elected its president thrice in a row. Besides, he also served as the general secretary of the JKLF, and was a member on its central executive committee. In Muzaffarabad, Zahoor stayed with a relative, Ghulam Mohiuddin, who was a Kashmiri migrant from Baramulla. He was married into a Baramulla family based in Muzaffarabad on October 8, 2000, and has one daughter and three sons, all born in Muzaffarabad. Sources said that Zahoor will kick off his political career in the valley with a public rally in Trehgam on the anniversary of Muhammad Maqbool Bhat.