MUZAFFARABAD: The Legislative Assembly of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) will hold a special session here on Saturday to pay homage to veteran Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani for his immeasurable services for the cause of Kashmiri nation.

The house will also condemn India for preventing Mr Geelani’s family and other Kashmiris not only from offering his funeral prayer but also burying him in the Srinagar’s martyrs’ graveyard in accordance with his will.

The session will be presided over by speaker Chaudhry Anwarul Haq.

Amjed Latif Abbasi, an additional secretary at the assembly secretariat, told Dawn on Friday that several lawmakers from both sides of the divide had submitted their resolutions, eulogising Mr Geelani for his steadfastness in the face of India’s brutal tyranny and vowing to carry on his mission, for debate during the special session.

Prior to the assembly session, the AJK cabinet will also hold a special meeting to pay tributes to the former All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman “in the backdrop of India’s brutal act of snatching his body, laying it to rest amid tight military siege and imposing lockdown after the quiet burial.”

Unlike the introductory session, the advisers and special assistants had not been invited for Saturday’s special cabinet meeting.

Also on Friday, the ghaibana nimaz-i-jinaza (funeral prayers in absentia) of Mr Geelani was offered in many mosques in AJK on the second consecutive day.

Commemorating the struggle and sacrifices of Mr Geelani, Tanvirul Islam, a former chairman of the United Jihad Council, said the void created by his death would hardly be filled in many years to come.

He maintained that in fact the death of Mr Geelani was custodial killing because he had been under house arrest for the past 12 years without a week’s break. He called upon the international community to wake up to the fact that India was an occupier and oppressor in occupied Kashmir and pressurise it into agreeing for a plebiscite in accordance with its own early pledges to the Kashmiris and the world community.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2021