‘No idea what’s going on’: youth’s father

Anantnag: A youth from south Kashmir’s Anantnag district was deported from Qatar and then arrested at New Delhi’s IGI Airport by a police team from Kulgam for his alleged involvement in a militancy related-case in Kashmir.
The youth has been identified as 24-year-old Munib Ahmad Sofi, son of Bilal Ahmad Sofi, a resident of Kanelwan area in Bijbehara. Sofi had been working at a juice factory in Qatar for the past one-and-a-half year.
The J&K Police on Friday issued a statement saying that Sofi was an Over Ground Worker (OGW) of the militant outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). “He was working for a Pakistani terrorist, Waleed Bhai, who was killed in a gunfight last year,” the police statement read, adding that Sofi was deported from Qatar and arrested at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi.
The arrest has been made by police from Kulgam. Kashmir Reader talked to SSP Kulgam, Gurinder Pal, who refused to answer any questions on whether Sofi was deported on India’s request or deported by Qatar on some other grounds.
“Whatever is written in the press note, I stand by it. No further questions will be answered,” Pal told Kashmir Reader.
Kashmir Reader talked to Bilal, Sofi’s father, who maintained that he had no idea what was going on. “I am getting calls about it and I don’t know what is going on,” he told this reporter.
Pertinently, Sofi’s family had earlier claimed that he had gone missing from Qatar after they failed to get in touch with him for over a week. Some news organisations had back then also reported that Sofi had gone missing from his rented accommodation in Qatar.
This reporter had visited Sofi’s family in Kanelwan back then and his father had said that Sofi had been summoned by police a few times before he went missing in Qatar.
“They (the police) told me to ask my son to refrain from whatever he was doing, which I still have no idea about,” Bilal had told this reporter. “I was also told that an FIR has been registered against him. I was too afraid to ask the police what the FIR was for. I am a simple man, a baker by profession, and these things are new to me.”
Bilal had asked this reporter to not file a story, as the company Sofi worked at had assured him that they will trace his son.
Today, Bilal said that he had been talking to his son regularly for the past month or so and had even talked to him a few days back while he was still in Qatar.
“I have no idea what has happened,” he said.
Sofi’s deportation is a significant development for the plain fact that police in Kashmir have wanted deportation of many individuals from different countries and this might open a window for speeding up the process.

Suhail A Shah