Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: Liaquat Ali, whom New Delhi accused of plotting a terror attack in the capital ahead of Holi festival, was returning to Kashmir along with his family only to lead a normal life, his wife says.
Ali, a former militant from Dardpora village in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, must have followed scores of other Kashmiri militants who returned home from Pakistan administered Kashmir after New Delhi announced a ‘surrender and rehabilitation’ plan for them.
He left the valley in the mid nineties and spent more than 15 years in Pakistan before deciding to return home recently, his wife Ameena told freepresskashmir.
She says that her husband had made all plans and was happy that he would lead “a normal life” again. “He called me up earlier this week and told me that his visa is ready and he was coming along with other family members. He was expected to reach here by 20th of March,” Ameena says.
Like most of the returnees, Ali had entered India via Nepal, but was arrested while in a train at Gorakhpur Railway Station in Uttar Pradesh. The Delhi police says he confessed that weapons were kept ready for him in a guest house near Jamia Masjid area in Central Delhi.
Official sources have confirmed that they knew Ali was returning home from Pakistan via Nepal. But they told freepresskashmir that they have the least idea about why the Delhi police arrested him.
Ameena says Ali had told her that he was being accompanied by his second wife, Akhter, and a teenage daughter who lived with him in Pakistan. “But I don’t know where they are now.”
The rehabilitation policy was introduced by New Delhi in 2010 for militants who had crossed over to Pakistan-administered Kashmir to be trained and join militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
The government has so far received 1089 applications from such militants, chief minister Omar Abdullah recently told the legislative assembly.
But nobody has officially returned yet as the policy could not take off due to Pakistan’s cold response to it.
However still, 233 militants have managed to reach the valley, many of them with their families, unofficially through the neigbouring Nepal. Ali was not that lucky.
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