LAHORE, Oct 19: The body of Kashmiri leader and leading physician Dr Muzaffar Shah, who died after a brief illness in an Edinburgh hospital on Friday, is reaching here on Wednesday for burial.
He had gone to see his two daughters living in England where he developed some respiratory ailment that proved fatal.
Dr Muzaffar Shah spent most of his life in Lahore after having migrated from Baramula in occupied Kashmir. As a medical student in Srinagar, he had political leanings and participated in freedom struggle of the people of Kashmir. In Lahore, he completed his medical education and started practice after serving the army for a brief period. He retired from the army as a major. He opened his clinic in Old Anarkali where he served the people for a long period of over 40 years. He had been the president of the Pakistan Medical Association, Punjab branch, and edited a medical journal of the PMA for some time.
He was an active Kashmiri leader who had devoted his life for the cause of the people of Kashmir. He set up the Kashmir Action Committee Pakistan soon after the Kashmiri people started their resistance against Indian occupation of Kashmir. He had been the president of the committee for the past 13 years. The committee brought out a fortnightly Kashmir Calling that advocated the cause of the people of Kashmir. As its chief editor, Dr Shah had been criticizing the Kashmir policies of India, human rights violations by its security forces in the state and the apathy of the international community towards the Kashmir problem.
The Kashmir Action Committee worked for the welfare of the Kashmiris who had settled in relief camps in Azad Kashmir after migration from held Kashmir. It collected funds and articles of daily use besides food grains and medicines for the Kashmiri refugees. He also mobilized the Kashmiri refugees settled in Pakistan and organized scores of conferences of Kashmiri leaders to discuss the Kashmir issue. These conferences submitted useful recommendations to the Pakistan government for a solution to the issue.
On various occasions, he used to organize rallies and hold demonstrations to protest against the atrocities and excesses committed on the hapless people of held Kashmir by Indian security forces. He wrote editorials in his fortnightly against the repression of Kashmiris, and contributed articles in newspapers and journals on Kashmir.He welcomed the ongoing peace process between Pakistan and India, but he was worried that the Kashmiris had not been involved in the process. He felt that no solution to the Kashmir dispute would be durable and acceptable to the people of Kashmir without taking them into confidence.
Dr Muzaffar Shah provided free medical aid to the deserving cases. As a physician, he had a very good reputation. He was respected in political, intellectual and medical circles for his honesty, uprightness and sound advice.
Patients came to his clinic from different parts of the country. Now they would not find the smiling face of Dr Shah to greet them in the clinic.
May Allah bless his soul.