Slain lawyer Babar Qadri.
Credit: X/@FrontalForce
Srinagar: The State Investigation Agency (SIA) of the Jammu and Kashmir police on Thursday filed a supplementary chargesheet against Mian Abdul Qayoom, a senior lawyer and former president of the High Court Bar Association (HCBA), in connection with the high-profile murder of lawyer Babar Qadri.
Mian Qayoom, also the father-in-law of Jammu and Kashmir High Court judge Justice Javed Iqbal Wani, served as HCBA president for over two decades.
The chargesheet presented before the 3rd Additional Sessions Judge, who serves as the Special Judge under Section 22 of the NIA Act, Jammu, links the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led faction of the Hurriyat Conference with the 2020 murder of Qadri.
According to sources, a lawyer of the Geelani faction hired The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-backed terror outfit, to kill Qadri, a young lawyer from Srinagar, who was gunned down by terrorists outside his residence in old city Hawal on September 24, 2020.
The chargesheet says that the Geelani faction wanted to control the HCBA and Qadri was killed because he was popular and wanted to contest elections.
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 the SIA and a special investigation team (SIT) was formed.
The SIT, on the basis of oral, documentary and technical evidence, arrested Mian Qayoom on June 25 this year as the “principal conspirator behind the killing.”
“It was revealed during the in-depth investigation conducted by the SIT that Mian Qayoom, who had an inimical relation with the deceased, got Qadri eliminated through terrorists of TRF and their handlers in Pakistan by hatching a criminal conspiracy,” a statement of the SIA said.
The TRF is believed to be an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Mian Qayoom, who has been a separatist, was the right-hand man of the late 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 Qayoom, which too had not gone down well with him, sources said.