No pro-IS slogans at my funeral: militant's last wish

The last wish of a wanted militant from a remote south Kashmir hamlet was a request to his mourners to not raise pro-Islamic State slogans at his funeral.

More than three months have passed, and Rouf Khanday's family vividly remembers his last words.

“In our last conversation he (Rouf) told me to wrap his body in a green flag and not allow anyone to raise IS slogans at his funeral. He was calm in his last moments,” his brother Naseer told DH.

Since the last one year, slowly but gradually, the pattern at funerals of militants in Kashmir is changing from pro-Pakistan green to IS's black.

Several slain militants' coffins are draped in a black Al-Qaeda/IS flag as 'Na Hurriyat wali Shariat, na Hurriyat wali azadi, Kashmir banega Darul Islam' (neither Hurriyat-type Shariat, nor Hurriyat-type freedom, Kashmir will become an Islamist nation) reverberates during funerals.

“Rouf called me at around 11 pm on March 31 informing that he was trapped. When I informed him that police wants him to surrender, he smiled and said his life will be finished if he surrenders and it will be hell as he will be thrown into a jail for the rest of life. He said dying a martyr’s death is much better,” said Naseer.

Rouf’s father Bashir Ahmad, a ‘rukan-e-Jammat’ (basic member of politico-religious organisation Jamait-e-Islami), blames the state police for forcing his son to pick up the gun.

“In 2016, police arrested my son for having a picture of Burhan Wani in his cell phone. Without showing his arrest and without providing a cause for his detention, police gave enough reasons for my son to become a militant,” he alleged.

Vividly remembering his last conversation with Rouf, Bashir Ahmad said, “We had a 15-minute chat with our son during which he repeatedly said that he has chosen his path and there is no way going back. In the last moments of his life, Rouf mostly spoke to his mother.”

The SSP Anantnag, Altaf Khan, took the initiative to bring Rouf’s parents to the encounter site to motivate him to lay down arms. However, the "mission" failed as the parents did not force their son to surrender.

Born in 2000, Rouf was a first-year BA student at a local college before going "missing" on February 4, 2016.