2 professors among 4 sacked in Indian-occupied Kashmir

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) – The government of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir has sacked two university professors and two officials, accusing them of their involvement in “secessionist” activities against the Indian occupation.

A government statement said activities of the sacked persons “had come to the adverse notice of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as they have been found involved in activities prejudicial to the security interests of the state.”

Their dismissal raises the number of Kashmiri Muslim employees who have been sacked since August 5, 2019, to 16. On that date, the Hindu nationalist Indian government had scrapped the autonomous status of the Muslim-majority region, forcibly incorporating it into the Indian state against the wishes and aspirations of the Kashmiri masses.

Majid Hussain Qadri, an assistant professor of management studies at Kashmir University in Srinagar, was sacked because, according to the government, “Qadri has a long association with ‘terror’ organizations including Lashkar-e-Toiba.”

Qadri had been jailed in June 2004 under the Public Safety Act, a controversial preventive detention law.

Muheet Ahmad Bhat, a scientist in the computer sciences department at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, was fired for, what the statement said, “propagating ‘secessionist-terrorist agenda’ in the University of Kashmir by radicalizing the students for advancing the program and agenda of Pakistan and its proxies.”

Two others – Asabah ul Arjumand Khan and Syed Abdul Mueed – are the kin of pro-freedom leaders.

Khan, an administrative officer, is the wife of Farooq Ahmad, who is currently jailed in a New Delhi prison. The government alleged that she had provided false information while applying for a passport and was in touch with “foreign persons indexed by Indian intelligence agencies for being on the payrolls of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.”

Mueed is the son of Syed Salahuddin, the supreme commander of the United Jihad Council, a Pakistan-based grouping of militant organizations. The statement said Mueed, an IT manager at an entrepreneurship institute, “was found having (a) role in three terror attacks” on the institute.

“His presence in the institution had increased sympathy with secessionist forces,” the statement reads.

Kashmir is currently ruled directly by New Delhi through a Lieutenant Governor after India illegally scrapped its special status in 2019. Even pro-India Kashmiri politicians, such as former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Farooq Abdullah, have said that since the scrapping of autonomy, repressive measures by the Indian state have increased. The Indian government, however, persistently denies these claims.

Several Indian leaders have been arbitrarily arrested, including popular veteran Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik, whose health while in custody continues to worsen.