Love beckons former militant commander Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karatay, whom Kashmiri pandits accuse of “killing their community members leading to their migration in 1990”.
The chairman of a breakaway faction of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) is all set to marry his lady love Assabah Arjumand Khan, a 2009 batch Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS), in Srinagar on November 1.
Khan, who has done MA in mass communication and journalism from the University of Kashmir, was working in Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agriculture Sciences before joining the civil services.
“We got engaged few months ago and will get married next week,” Karatay, 38, said.
It was in 2009 when love bug bit Karatay two years after he was released from the prison.“It is a marriage arranged by our families,” he said.
Karatay was arrested in 1990 and he spent around 17 years in different jails before his first release in 2007. He was again arrested during the Amarnath land row in 2008 and booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA). He was released after nine months.
“Every Kashmiri, be it in PoK or this Kashmir, wants azadi in Jammu and Kashmir. They want to live with neither India nor Pakistan. They want to be independent and I am just one of them fighting for this goal,” Karatay said.
Kashmiri pandits have accused Karatay of killing several of their community members, a charge he vehemently denies.
“Every saint has his past and every sinner has his future. It is an irony and a mockery of law that Karatay is roaming free,” said Agnishekhar, convener of Panun Kashmir, the apex body of Kashmiri migrant pandits in Jammu.
Karatay has joined the elite club of separatists who solomnised their marriage while being at the forefront of secessionist struggle during the last 21 years of turmoil in the state. JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik married Mushaal Mullick, a noted Pakistani painter a few years ago. Javid Ahmad Mir, another JKLF leader, is married to a lawyer from Srinagar.
Chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is married to Sheeba Masoodi, an American citizen of Kashmir descent. People’s Conference chairman Sajjad Lone is married to Asma Khan, daughter of Pakistani JKLF leader Amanullah Khan.
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