Omar Angry, fears youth ‘alienation’
An angry Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Sunday criticised Afzal Guru’s execution, saying this would “reinforce a sense of alienation and injustice” among generations of youth in the Valley.
Mr Abdullah said it was a “tragedy” that Guru was not allowed to meet his family before he was hanged, and not allowed a “final farewell”.
Clearly unhappy with the hanging, the chief minister said there were many questions that needed to be answered. He added that the “long-term implications” of Guru’s hanging were “far more worrying” as they were related to a new generation of youth in Kashmir “who may not have identified with Maqbool Butt, but will identify with Afzal Guru”. Butt, a Kashmiri separatist leader, was hanged in Tihar jail in 1984 for the murder of Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre in Britain.
“Please understand there is more than one generation of Kashmiris that see themselves as victims,” Mr Abdullah said in a series of television interviews.
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