Express News Service
SRINAGAR: Senior separatist leader and chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, who was in detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and lodged in a Jammu jail, passed away at a hospital in Jammu on Wednesday.
Sehrai was shifted to the Government Medical College Jammu on Tuesday after his condition deteriorated at Kotbalwal jail, Jammu. He was suffering from multiple ailments.
The 77-year-old Sehrai was arrested by the government last year and booked under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA). After being booked under the PSA, he was shifted to Kotbalwal Jail, Jammu.
Sehrai, who hailed from Tekipora village of Lolab Valley in Kupwara district, had taken over as chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat after hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani stepped down as chairman of the separatist group in March 2018.
Sehrai was a close aide of Syed Ali Geelani.
Sehrai’s son Junaid Sehrai, who was an MBA pass out and joined militancy, was killed in an encounter with security forces in downtown Srinagar last year.
People’s Conference chairman and former minister Sajjad Gani Lone while paying tributes to Sehrai said a long political career comes to an end.
“Ashraf Sahib struggled all his life. A Jamaat ideologue. When I was 19, I bumped into him and he told me tell your father – kitney haseen hain terey lab ki galiyan dekey bemaza na hua. May Allah grant him Jannat,” Lone tweeted.
“This is the irony of Kashmiri politics. Top-quality politicians consumed by the conflict. The ideological versatility of Kashmir politics is a curse. A transparently honest politician spent decades in jail,” he further tweeted.
