The jailed Tehreek-i-Hurriyat chairman and senior pro-freedom leader, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, 78, breathed his last at a hospital in Jammu on Wednesday, where he was shifted from Udhampur jail after complaining of severe respiratory illness.Sehrai was shifted to
Government Medical College
in Jammu on Tuesday and his family in Srinagar - over 300kms away - was informed about his deteriorating health condition. Within hours of being admitted to Jammu hospital, doctors declared him dead. His oxygen saturation level was around 65 to 70. However, the family informed that his Rapid and
RT-PCR
tests for Covid19 were negative. Sehrai has spent several years of his life in jail and his latest detention started in July 2020, when he was booked under Public Safety Act.“Our acquaintances in Jammu, who went to see him on Tuesday evening informed us that Sehrai sahib was lying helpless on a bed in the hospital. His condition was critical and deteriorating,” said a family member.
The authorities informed the family that Sehrai's burial would be allowed under strict Covid19 protocol in his native village in Lolab Valley of Kupwara in northern Kashmir, around 120 km from Srinagar and 420 km from Jammu hospital where he passed away. After completing medico-legal formalities his son shifted the body from Jammu and reached Kupwara in the wee hours of Thursday.The administration had deployed a huge contingent of police and paramilitary forces in Sehrai's native village. A local from the village informed that all entry and exit points leading towards the graveyard were sealed and over a dozen family members and relatives were allowed to offer his funeral prayers and complete the burial around 4 am on Thursday.Around ten days ago, Sehrai had informed the family members over the phone from the jail that his health was deteriorating, but the authorities weren’t paying any attention. Since then he had no communication with the family. A senior jail official said that they had written to the J&K’s Home Department previously and also on Tuesday, recommending Sehrai’s shifting from Udhampur to Jammu jail, where he could get better medical attention, but there was no forward movement on this communication. “He was aged with multiple ailments, so we had recommended his shifting to Jammu, as we have to follow protocol and cannot do it on our own,” said a senior jail official.Sehrai was among the oldest and staunch pro-freedom leaders of Kashmir. He was the trusted companion of
Syed Ali Shah Geelani
, who floated the Tehreek-i-Hurriyat organization with him in 2004. Sehrai was elected as chairman of TeH in 2018, succeeding Geelani, 92, who is currently bed ridden and under house arrest at his residence in Srinagar. Within days of taking over TeH, his son Junaid Sehrai, a management graduate, joined militant ranks and became commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. Sehrai was unaware of his son’s decision and refused to request Junaid for surrender, as was suggested to him from several quarters. Junaid was killed in an encounter in May 2020, two months before Sehrai’s fresh detention. Sehrai, like Geelani, was also the basic member of Jama’at e Islami and was seen as a ‘straight forw
ard’ politician who at times has criticized Geelani in his personal communications on various issues and was known to be more ‘rigid and regimented’ than Geelani. Several formal and informal stakeholders of the Kashmir conflict repeatedly attempted to exploit Sehrai's ‘straight forwardness and plain speak’ to break his union with Geelani and split TeH but failed to do so till he breathed his last.Sehrai was an organizational man capable of working on the grassroots and building cadre. He avoided the limelight despite his strong and impactful position within the pro-freedom leadership in Kashmir. He has never been accused of moral or financial corruption. He was nicknamed ‘jailbird’ for spending many years in prison as JeI and later as TeH leader. He was also an avid reader of politics, history and poetry especially Iqbal, Faiz and Ghalib. Other than the holy Quran and Hadith, he often quoted poets and philosophers during his lectures and interviews. In the 1970’s he had fought an assembly election against the then-popular leader of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah on the JeI ticket from the Ganderbal constituency. Although Sehrai lost, he reportedly said, “We (Jama’at-e-Islami) wanted to break the myth that the Sheikh cannot be challenged and that he was invincible.” Meanwhile, political parties across the spectrum condoled his demise and condemned the government's policy to incarcerate politicians for their ideology. They demanded immediate release of other political prisoners. The Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan and other leaders from across the border also condoled his demise.The Hurriyat Conference paid tributes to Sehrai saying that he was a sincere, able and honest leader who dedicated his life to his party and its ideology and worked selflessly for the people’s movement, suffering lockup’s and jails in the course of his life. “He was left unattended by the authorities till his condition worsened yesterday and he died. APHC deeply regrets this inhumane attitude of the authorities and is pained by it,” read the official statement.The former chief minister of J&K Mehbooba Mufti said that in today’s India one has to pay the price of his life for dissent. “Deeply saddened to know about Ashraf Sehrai sahab’s sudden demise. Like him countless political prisoners & other detainees from J&K continue to be jailed purely for their ideologies and thought process...” she wrote on Twitter. Mufti said that GoI in current dangerous circumstances could release these detainees on parole so that they return home to their families.The J&K People’s Conference leader and former minister Sajad Lone remembered Sehrai as a top-quality politician, who was consumed by the conflict. “...Ashraf Sahib struggled all his life. A Jama’at ideologue...the ideological versatility of Kashmir politics is a curse... A transparently honest politician spent decades in jail,” Lone wrote in a string of tweets. He also questioned his detention lamenting, “...Have we become so weak that an old infirm dying person is a threat to the state. I am not being critical. But please introspect. Sehrai Sahib was a political leader, not a terrorist.”
