Thaindian News

Srinagar, April 8 (IANS) Prominent religious leader Maulana Showkat Shah of the Jamiat-e-Ahilhadith was killed in a blast as he entered a mosque in Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar Friday, prompting a spontaneous shutdown that crippled life in the city.

“An IED (improvised exploslive device) had been planted on a bicycle parked close to the Ahilhadith mosque (in the Gaw Kadal area of Srinagar). When the maulana reached outside the mosque, unknown assassins triggered the IED, resulting in critical injuries to the cleric and another passerby,” a senior police officer said here.

Shah, 55, was rushed to the SMHS hospital, where doctors declared him dead.

Another man, identified as Mukhtar Ahmad Mir and a resident of the Maisuma locality, sustained critical injuries in the explosion and is being treated in the hospital.

Scores of mourners, shouting pro-freedom slogans, took Shah’s body in a procession to the Gaw Kadal area adjacent to city centre Lal Chowk and the Maisuma locality.

The Nimaz-e-Jinaza (funeral prayers) of the slain religious leader will be offered at Gaw Kadal at 5 p.m. Friday evening and the burial will take place at the Martyrs’ Graveyard at the Eidgah grounds in the old city, sources in the Jamiat-e-Ahilhadith said.

The Jamiat-e-Ahilhadith is a highly puritanical group of Muslims closer to the Wahabi school of thought in Saudi Arabia.

During the last few decades, the Ahilhadith school of thought has gained a large following here and its followers have spread to the length and breadth of the Kashmir Valley.

Because of their highly puritanical beliefs, the Ahilhadiths are generally seen as being against “Tawheed Parast” (Oneness of Allah).

The Jamiat-e-Ahilhadith is neither a member of the hardline Hurriyat group headed by Syed Ali Geelani nor the moderate Hurriyat group headed by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq.

Personally, however, Shah had a very close relationship with Muhammad Yasin Malik, the chairman of the pro-freedom Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

Shah was the Valley’s most vocal critic of last summer’s stone-pelting protests and even issued a fatwa against it, earning for himself abuse, death threats and the tag of “Indian agent”.

As news of his death spread, shopkeepers downed shutters in Lal Chowk, Maisuma, Gaw Kadal and Residency Road areas of the city.

Traffic also thinned out in the city as tension mounted.

The authorities have increased vigil in Srinagar and large numbers of police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were deployed in Lal Chowk, Maisuma and other sensitive areas of the city.