By Shazia Yousuf
SRINAGAR, Indian-held Kashmir
Unidentified gunmen on Tuesday have shot dead a pro-independence activist and, in Sopore town in a northern region of Indian-held Kashmir.
While the Indian police in the region said that militants were responsible for the killing, the resistance leadership has blamed Indian agencies and has vowed revenge.
Muhammad Altaf Sheikh, 47, a government pharmacist and a member of Kashmiri resistance leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani's Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party, was shot dead outside his home in the Iqbal Nagar area of Sopore at 11.25 a.m. (0540GMT) when he was returning home from a 12-hour shift at the hospital, according to police officials.
Sheikh, who was shot twice in the chest and twice in the head, was a vocal opponent of Indian rule and the son of the head of Jamaat-e -Islami party in Sopore.
“Militants today shot dead Mohammed Altaf Sheikh of Sopore outside his home,” a senior official of the Indian police told Anadolu Agency. “We have registered a case and have begun investigations in the matter but there are inputs that it is militants who killed the man.”
Last month, two people were killed and three wounded in the area in attacks against telecom offices and towers in the region.
Though no outfit has accepted responsibility for the attacks, police have blamed Lashkar-e-Islam, a previously unknown group, for the attacks.
The United Jihad Council, an umbrella group of 13 militant organizations operating in Indian-held Kashmir, had condemned the attacks on telecom services and disavowed Lashkar-e-Islam, calling it a “government sponsored group” trying to “bring disrepute to the resistance movement in the disputed land”.
The separatist leadership and, particularly the octogenarian leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had criticized the group calling the attacks “un-Islamic” and the “handiwork of Indian agencies”.
Lashkar-e-Islam had retorted back last week and asked Geelani to “check within his party” for people who were “responsible for the killing of several militants”.
“After Geelani called them [government] agents, the group has come to hit back and has killed someone from his party. We have reasons to believe that this killing is linked to the statement Geelani gave against the group,” a senior police official said.
Sheikh’s family said that he had spent years in prison for his resistance politics.
In 2008, police arrested Skeikh for allegedly planning an attack on the chief minister at the time during his visit to Sopore.
In 2000, Sheikh’s younger brother, Sheikh Rouf, a PhD scholar, was killed along with three other civilians allegedly in the army's custody.
Sheikh's death led to the shutdown of businesses, government offices and educational institutions Tuesday and thousands of people attended his funeral raising pro-independence and anti-Indian slogans.
Geelani condemned Sheikh’s killing, saying it had confirmed that the attacks on telecom services had been done by Indian agencies and that Lashkar-e-Islam was an Indian-linked outfit.
“There is the hand of the Indian agencies behind the killing and this way they actually want to frighten and terrorize the people who are on the forefront of the freedom struggle of Kashmir,” Geelani said.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.
The two countries have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965 and 1971 – since they were partitioned in 1947, two of which were fought over Kashmir.
Since 1989, Kashmiri resistance groups in Indian-held Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.
