Hurriyat Conference distances itself from alleged Srinagar meeting to 'revive separatism and militancy'

Sources said 43 people, including Shia and Hurriyat leader Maulana Masroor Abbas Ansari, were present in the hotel room when it was raided by the police.

A day after Jammu and Kashmir Police detained over three dozen separatist leaders and their supporters for “planning to revive separatism and militancy”, Hurriyat Conference on Monday distanced itself from the same.

On Sunday evening, the police said they had detained a group of separatists who had assembled at a Srinagar hotel for a meeting. In a tweet, the police said the detained separatists were trying to “revive” Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and the separatists conglomerate Hurriyat Conference.

A police team raided the hotel and detained all separatists and some members of the banned JKLF, who were taken to the Kothibagh police station in Srinagar. Sources said the separatists had assembled for a seminar that was being organised by the Democratic Political Movement (DPM), an affiliate of the Hurriyat Conference led by late Syed Ali Geelani before he parted ways with it.

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However, the Hurriyat, in a statement on Monday, said “it wants to make it clear that those who attended this lunch, went in their individual capacity, and not as members of Hurriyat.”

“It was not any Hurriyat event nor was Hurriyat leadership aware of it. In fact it is through the media that Hurriyat came to know about it. So to attribute motives to Hurriyat in this regard is mere speculation and totally baseless,” a statement by the Hurriyat, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said.

Sources said 43 people, including influential Shia and Hurriyat leader Maulana Masroor Abbas Ansari, were present in the hotel room when it was raided by the police. The leaders and supporters who were detained by the police also included a close aide of Mirwaiz.

Masroor’s father, late Maulana Abbas Ansari, was the former Hurriyat Conference chairman who died in October last year. Sources said some of the organisers of the meeting could be booked under public safety act (PSA).

When Abbas Ansari was the Hurriyat chairman, separatist leaders had entered into talks with the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003.

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Since August 2019, after the Center abrogated J&K’s special status under Article 370, the visibility of separatists declined as a major crackdown was launched against the Hurriyat and other outfits. The authorities have disallowed any Hurriyat meeting or activity since 2019.

Sunday’s bid was the first such attempt by the Hurriyat or the JKLF to re-engage and organise a meeting in nearly four years.