Maqbool Bhat

Maqbool Bhat also spelt Maqbool Butt (18 February 1938 – 11 February 1984)

was a Kashmiri Pro-independence leader who fled to Pakistan and founded the resistance group National Liberation Front (NLF), which was a precursor to the present day Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

Bhat carried out multiple attacks in Jammu and Kashmir (state).

He was captured and sentenced to double death sentence.

Muhammad Maqbool Bhat was born on 18 February, 1938 in the Trehgam village of the Kupwara district in the Kashmir Valley of the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu in British India (now Jammu and Kashmir, India) into a Kashmiri Muslim family.

His father was called Ghulam Qadir Bhat.

His mother died when Maqbool was 11 years old, and his father remarried.

After studying locally, Bhat went to study at the St. Joseph's School and College in Baramulla, where he graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science around 1957.

The feudal system under the princely state and the politics of Sheikh Abdullah after independence shaped Bhat's political views.

During the college days, he was involved with the student activities of the Plebiscite Front (founded by Mirza Afzal Beg when Sheikh Abdullah was in prison for canvassing for independence).

In December 1957, Sheikh Abdullah was released, leading to agitations.

He was rearrested in April 1958.

The student activists of the Plebiscite Front were also targeted at this time, causing Maqbool Bhat to leave for Pakistan in August 1958.

Bhat joined the Peshawar University, studying for an MA Urdu Literature in Peshawar, Pakistan He worked for some time as a journalist for the local newspaper Anjaam.

In 1961, Bhat contested in the 'Basic Democracy' elections introduced by President Ayub Khan's military regime, and won the Kashmiri diaspora seat from Peshawar.

The elected government of K. H. Khurshid lasted till 1964, when Pakistan forced its resignation.

In April 1965, the Azad Kashmir Plebiscite Front was formed in Muzaffarabad at the initiative of Abdul Khaliq Ansari, its president, and Amanullah Khan, its general secretary.

Maqbool Bhat was appointed as the publicity secretary, owing to his journalistic background.

Journalist Arif Jamal states that, the participants drove to an unguarded location of the Kashmir Line of Control at Suchetgarh and, bringing back soil from the Indian-held Kashmir, took an oath that they would work exclusively for the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir.

Amanullah Khan and Maqbool Bhat also wanted to set up an armed wing for the Plebiscite Front, but the proposal did not get the majority support in the Plebiscite Front.

Undeterred, they established an underground group called National Liberation Front (NLF), obtaining some support for it in August 1965.

The group was fashioned after the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale.

Major Amanullah, a former soldier in the Azad Kashmir forces, was in charge of the armed wing while Amanullah Khan and Mir Abdul Qayoom took charge of the political and financial wings.

Maqbool Bhat was made responsible for the overall coordination.

All the members swore in blood that they would be ready to sacrifice their lives for the objective of the NLF, viz., to create conditions in Jammu and Kashmir that enable its people to demand self-determination.

The organisation was successful in recruiting members from Azad Kashmir, and obtained backing from the bureaucracy of the state.

For ten months, The NLF recruited and trained a cadre of militants in the use of explosives and small arms.

On 10 June 1966, two groups of NLF crossed into Jammu and Kashmir.

The first group consisting of Maqbool Bhat, a student from Gilgit called Tahir Aurangzeb, an immigrant from Jammu called Mir Ahmad, and a retired subedar called Kala Khan, went around the cities to find recruit and set up secret cells.

The second group, under Major Amanullah, trained the recruit in sabotage activities in the forests of Kupwara.

However, in September 1966, Bhat's group was compromised near Srinagar.

The group kidnapped a CID police inspector called Amar Chand as a hostage and, when he tried to escape, shot and killed him.

The police mounted a search and zeroed in on them, leading to an exchange of fire in the Kunial village near Handwara.

A member of Bhat's group, Kala Khan, was killed.

Bhat and Mir Ahmad were captured and tried for sabotage and murder, receiving death sentences from a Srinagar court in September 1968.

Major Amanullah's wing waiting to receive the volunteers at the Line of Control retreated, but it was arrested by the Pakistan Army.

Maqbool Bhat's arrest brought the group's activities into the open, and sharply divided the Plebiscite Front.

Nevertheless, they declared it an unconstitutional body and "banned" it.

Meanwhile, Maqbool Bhat and Mir Ahmad escaped from the Indian prison in December 1968, along with another inmate Ghulam Yasin, tunneling their way out of the prison complex.

He was hanged on 11 February 1984 in Tihar Jail in Delhi.