My father was killed for expressing ideas: Sajjad Lone

Separatist-turned-mainstream politician, Sajjad Lone on Friday said that his father Abdul Gani Lone was killed “for speaking the truth and expressing his ideas.”

Senior Lone, who was a senior leader of Hurriyat Conference, was killed by Hizbul Mujahideen militants on May 21, 2002, in Srinagar for opposing a growing gun culture in the Valley. He was considered an advocate of finding a lasting solution to Kashmir through peaceful means.

In a series of tweets, his son Sajjad Lone said those who opposed his father and created a false narrative that ended up in his killing saw what his father was mercifully spared from seeing.

“But what gives me some solace is that those who opposed him and created that false narrative that culminated in my father being killed- that crowd, some of them still alive, were better dead than alive. They saw what my father was mercifully spared from seeing,” Sajjad, chairman of Peoples Conference (PC), tweeted.

He said the worse oppressors are those who oppress under the garb of fighting oppression.

“As long as we do not stop collectively lying especially on who killed whom we as people will continue to be in the state that we are. People deserve to know-oppressors have many forms. And the worse form of oppressors are those who oppress under the fig leaf of fighting oppression," Sajjad, who was a cabinet minister on BJP quota during the PDP-BJP alliance in J&K from 2015 to 2018, said in another tweet.