Nearly nine years after Abdul Gani Lone’s son Sajjad Lone accused Pakistan’s ISI of killing his father, Sajjad has now said that he agrees with former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Butt’s recent statement wherein he said that “our own men” killed the elder Lone and Mirwaiz Mohammed Farooq.
Sajjad, who leads the Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Conference, while writing a first-person account of the day his father was slain, has said in a Kashmir daily: “In retrospect, I don’t think I should have accused an institution of the killing. But Prof. Butt has shown the way when he stated that it was our own people who killed Lone sahib.”
Prof. Butt’s statement, made just about a week ago, continues to create ripples. Speaking at a seminar in Sringar recently, the separatist leader had said: “No police was involved in the killings... It was our own people who killed them.” Stating that it was time to speak the truth, he had said that the elder Lone, the Mirwaiz as also his own brother, Mohammed Sultan Butt, were killed by “our own people”.
Defending Prof. Butt’s statement, Sajjad said: “For all those cynics and sermonisers who are questioning his timing, his intentions, I, a son who lost his father to bullets, would want to put my appreciation on record. Truth, however bitter, has to prevail. It is never late to speak the truth.”
He further added: “Lone Sahib, Mirwaiz Sahib have left this world. We cannot get them back. But if we do not learn any lessons from their killings we will be doing a great disservice to the very nation whose aspirations we claim to espouse. There is nothing like a good murderer and a bad murderer.
“The culture of unaccountability, impunity cultivated and nourished by a select group of intellectuals, thinkers has only emboldened the killers to indulge in more heinous acts, aimed at disempowering the Kashmiri voice and coercing it into submission. It is time that the select band, decide whose side they are on—the murderer or the murdered.”