Hriday Nath Wanchoo was a Kashmiri communist trade-unionist, who is remembered for ensuring the socioeconomic upliftment of sanitation workers and documenting abuse of human rights by the millitant groups in Kashmir. He was one of the two Hindu ministers in the "government in-absentia" run by Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, in early 1990s.

Career and politics

Wanchoo was employed as the Khilafarzi officer in Srinagar municipality. Wanchoo documented extrajudicial murders, rapes, and illegal detentions by millitant forces often filing petitions for legal recourse. He was a pioneer that fought for Kashmiri muslims Varadarajan, Patanjali M. ''A Report on Torture, Extra-judicial Executions, Rape, Arbitrary Arrests, Disappearances and other Violations of Basic Human Rights by the Indian Security Forces in Indian-administered Kashmir''. (Undertaken in co-operation with Federation Internationale des Droits de L'Homme)

Death

Wanchoo was assassinated by "unidentified gunmen" on 5 December 1992.These unidentified men came asking him to help them out in some legal case and he recognized them because he would often help the Kashmiri muslims. But they brutally murdered him and shot him at a 4-way intersection. This is similar to the incidents shown in the movie Kashmir Files, where Kashmiri pandits were targeted by their co-workers, neighbours and friends who were Kashmiri Muslims. Local activists accused the government of having released two militants in exchange for an extra-judicial execution, one of whom was later killed in an " encounter";

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

noted Wanchoo's murder to fit into the state's brutal suppression of conversations on human rights. Days before his death, Wanchoo had confessed in private, about threats to his life from millitant groups. However, the

Central Bureau of Investigation The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is the premier investigating agency of India. It operates under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. Originally set up to investigate bribery and governmen ...

, upon probing the murder, laid the blame on a militant group called "Jamait-ul-Mujahidin". Three of its members — Mohammad Shafi Khan (aka Shafi Shariati), a faculty member of the University of Kashmir specialising in

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;

Ashiq Hussain Faktoo Qasim Faktoo (also known as Mohammad Qasim) is a Kashmiri separatist and militant, serving life imprisonment for the murder of Hriday Nath Wanchoo. He had been among the earliest cadres of Hizbul Mujahideen. Personal life Faktoo graduated i ...

, a budding separatist; Ghulam Qadir Bhat — went to trial, all of whom had confessed to their crimes. Whereas the trial court acquitted all of them citing procedural deficiencies in obtaining confessional statements and the absence of ''any'' other corroborative evidence, the Supreme Court of India overturned the judgement and sentenced all of them to life imprisonment. The judgement remains disputed; Scholars Seema Kaji and Sumantra Bose suspect the Indian state to have had a role in the murder.

References

{{Reflist Year of birth missing Place of birth missing 1992 deaths Assassinated Indian people Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front Activists from Jammu and Kashmir Indian trade unionists Indian communists