A powerful militant group has admitted that one of its own members killed a veteran Kashmiri in Indian held Kashmir, in a report released Friday. Maulana Shaukat Ahmad Shah, a respected cleric and strong pro-independence supporter, was assassinated on April 8 in a bomb blast in occupied Srinagar, as he entered a mosque.
Militant groups had earlier blamed the daylight killing on Indian security agencies who they accused of seeking to "sabotage the freedom struggle of Kashmiris". But an "internal probe" by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) said that one of its own members, Javed Munshi, was responsible for the killing of Shah, who was regarded as a moderate voice in Kashmiri politics.
"At first instance, we thought Indian agencies and troops had martyred him (Shah) to weaken the (separatist) movement," said the LeT report, handed to senior Kashmiri leaders by the group on Thursday. "One thing we never thought was that our own (man) killed Maulana," it said. Munshi and his alleged accomplices have already been arrested by Indian police on charges of murdering Shah.
Kashmiri leaders from various Kashmiri groups, who had formed a panel to probe Shah's death, gave the LeT report to the media on Friday. It marked the first time that any group has released a report into the killing of a high-profile Kashmiri. The report said Munshi believed that all Kashmir leaders were working closely with Indian authorities and did not merit LeT's support.
In occupied Srinagar's main jail, Munshi confided to another imprisoned militant, Imran, that he had killed Shah and that "Muhammad Yasin Malik and other leaders" would be targeted next, the Lashkar report said. Malik heads the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front and was a close friend of Shah.
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