Srinagar, February 11, 2019 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, Shahmali Begum, the mother of Maqbool Butt has said that hundreds of youth who laid down their lives in the past 30 years of armed struggle are also her sons. The aged woman while talking to media at her Kupwara residence said, “Age-wise, I am advancing towards the grave, where my sons are waiting to welcome me. But I wish to see the dawn of freedom in Kashmir”.
Shahmali said she heard through radio a day earlier that her son would to be hanged at 7am the next day. “It was Saturday,” she recalls. “A pall of gloom descended on our family. I wished to see him once before his hanging, but I was helpless,” she said, reiterating that “there are hundreds of Maqbools in Kashmir, like my son”.
“His hanging anniversary always gives me same emotions and reminds me of the night before he was hanged,” she said. She said her eldest son, Ghulam Nabi Butt, was on way to Delhi to see Maqbool in Tihar but wasn’t allowed to leave Kashmir.
The police arrested him at Srinagar, she said. “Manzoor Ahmad, my another son was also arrested the same night. All the three brothers were in custody, but two of them were released after Maqbool was hanged,” Shahmali said, lamenting that the authorities did not even give the family Maqbool’s body for the last rites.
“When my another son was killed, the then commanding officer of task force Gulbadan Singh came here (to our house) and interrogated us. My two teeth were broken during the interrogation, which always reminds me of the cruelty of the Indian forces on us,” Shahmali said, showing the broken teeth.
No one was allowed to see Maqbool before his execution and he was buried inside the jail premises. Maqbool Butt’s sister Mehmooda recalls: “We went to Srinagar airport to catch a flight to Delhi to see Maqbool, but the police stopped us”.
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