Updated: September 25, 2020 10:23:49 am
Babar Qadri was shot dead by unidentified gunmen (Archive)
Unidentified gunmen shot dead prominent defender Babar Qadri, who had taken on many cases related to human rights and juvenile justice in Kashmir, in Srinagar on Thursday night. The attack came three days after Qadri tweeted about a possible threat to his life.
Qadri was shot point-blank outside his residence in Hawal in central Srinagar by assailants who managed to escape. He was rushed to hospital, but pronounced dead on arrival. SP, Hazratbal, Sudhanshu Verma said: “This happened around 6pm. We are conducting an investigation. “
J&K police sources said: “He was shot as he was leaving his home. He tried to run inside and they shot him again. “
Qadri often appeared in television debates and wrote on the opinion pages of local newspapers. He argued that Kashmir was a trilateral dispute, involving India, Pakistan and Kashmir. He questioned both the separatists and the main political leaders and said that it was “pro-Kashmir without being anti-India.” He had also spoken out against the J&K Superior Court Bar Association, and filed a separate body.
In a tweet on September 21, Qadri wrote: “I urge the State Police administration to register FIR against this Shah Nazir who has spread a wrong campaign in which I work for agencies. This false statement could endanger my life. ” He also posted a screenshot of his conversation with an individual on Facebook who accused Qadri of being “projected by the agencies.”
However, police sources said that Qadri had not filed any official complaint with them.
In June 2018, shortly after the assassination of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari, Qadri had questioned why Bukhari’s “raider-linked” blogs were still operational. “If something bad happens to me, the responsibility falls on Syed salahudin and JRL, as both UJC and JRL have kept … silence on the hit list.” While UJC stands for United Jihad Council, a group of militants active in J&K and headed by Salahuddin, JRL is Joint Resistance Leadership, an umbrella separatist body that includes Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and Yasin Malik.
Active in student politics while at the University of Kashmir, Qadri had been practicing law since 2008. In one of his tweets, he had challenged the legality of the bar association, saying: “Consulting all my friends to petition against the Indian Council of Lawyers, State Bar Association and High Court of Lawyers Challenging the legality of the Association and delegation of powers to it by the State Bar. ”In 2012, it launched an association called Lawyers Club Kashmir.
On Kashmir, Qadri tweeted: “Kashmir is a trilateral dispute and needs a friendly solution through trilateral dialogue.”
All Kashmiri political parties condemned the murder of Qadri, one day after a member of the Bloc Development Council was assassinated in Budgam. The Vice President of the National Conference, Omar Abdullah, said: “The sense of tragedy is all the greater because he warned of the threat. Unfortunately, his warning was his last tweet. “
People’s Conference President Sajad Lone tweeted: “Another Kashmir falls to the bullets. Yet another victim of the conflict. “
The BJP also expressed shock as Congress urged the administration to “find out the identity of the killers for exemplary punishment.” Iltija Javed, tweeting from her mother’s nickname Mehbooba Mufti, said: “As Kashmiris, we write messages of condolence day after day. Party workers, journalists, lawyers, innocent people who are killed for no reason ”.
J&K Apni Party Vice Chairman Ghulam Hassan Mir said that the murder of a “promising young lawyer representing members of the poorest and most marginalized areas of Kashmir… including many of the conflict victims and their families, has a devastating impact on access to justice in Kashmir ”.
Qadri is survived by his wife and two young daughters.
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