SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir police have filed a chargesheet linking the Syed Ali Shah Geelani faction with the 2020 murder of J&K Bar Association member Advocate Babar Qadri. According to sources, a lawyer of the Geelani faction hired The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-backed terror outfit, to kill Qadri.
According to news agency Kashmir Dot Com, the chargesheet says that the Geelani faction wanted to control the J&K Bar Association and Qadri, a budding lawyer, was killed because he was popular and wanted to contest elections.
Qadri had gone live on Facebook hours before the killing..
The Jammu & Kashmir Police presented the chargesheet against Advocate Mian Abdul Qayoom, former president of the High Court Bar Association (HCBA), Kashmir, before the Special NIA Judge, Jammu, in the high-profile Babar Qadri murder case.
Babar Qadri was killed by terrorists on 24 September 2020, at his residence, Zahidpora (Hawal), Srinagar. During the initial investigation, six people, including an active terrorist, were found involved in the killing and were chargesheeted before the Special NIA Court in Srinagar in 2021.
However, in July 2023, the case was transferred for further investigation to SIA, J&K.
During this, the family members of the deceased were increasingly getting suspicious after they were being threatened and pressurised against following up the case in court.
The SIA, in its investigation based on oral, documentary and technical evidence, found the direct involvement of Mian Qayoom behind the killing. Mian Qayoom, who has been a separatist, was the right-hand man of the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani since the early 1990s. He reportedly had inimical relations with the deceased as the latter had challenged his one-upmanship at the Kashmiri Bar. Reports say the murdered advocate also used to speak against Qayoom for using HCBA Kashmir as a platform to further his secessionist agenda.
The deceased, Babar Qadri, had also set up a parallel body within the HCBA, named the Kashmir Lawyers Club. He was also contemplating fighting elections against Mian Abdul Qayoom, which too had not gone down well with him, sources said.
Mian Qayoom had also reportedly extended threats to the deceased through his coterie at the HCBA.
Sources said that Mian Qayoom had earned notoriety in the last two decades for literally treating the HCBA Kashmir as his fiefdom and converting it into a constituent of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC). He had been issuing hartal calendars in the Kashmir valley on behalf of HCBA Kashmir, concurrently with strike calls given by the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led APHC.
Mian Qayoom had been so emboldened by the support he received at the hands of separatists that he had once declared in open court that he did not believe in the Constitution of India. Ironically, he had established a highly lucrative legal practice in the same High Court which was established under the provision of the very Indian Constitution he refused to acceopt.
The in-depth investigation conducted by the SIA revealed that Mian Qayoom entered into a criminal conspiracy with the terrorists of the banned TRF outfit. The TRF is a proxy organisation for Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), formed after the reorganisation of the erstwhile J&K State on 5 August 2019, and their handlers in Pakistan.
The terrorists, on 24 September 2020, entered the house of the deceased and fired bullets at him, leading to his death while being shifted to Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar, the chargesheet said.
It is interesting to note that Babar Qadri had developed some kind of premonition on the day of his killing so much so that he went live on Facebook a few hours before the incident and expressed his fears of being eliminated.
Tragically, that same evening, he was killed by the waiting terrorists who entered his house in the guise of clients and met him on the pretext of discussing some case.
Mian Qayoom was arrested on 25 June 2024, and has since been lodged in District Jail, Jammu.
Though the initial trial in this case was going on in Srinagar, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir in December 2023, transferred the trial to Jammu, taking note of his interference in the judicial process and the threat to the victim’s family at the hands of Mian Qayoom.
SIA in a statement to Kashmir Dot Com on Thursday said that it has presented a detailed 340-page-long supplementary chargesheet before the Special Judge under the NIA Act, Jammu, against Mian Qayoom. The trial in the case against Mian Qayoom is expected to begin soon. (KDC)
