A pic­ture of seren­ity, Maq­bool Bhat read his last Na­maz, drank tea and peace­fully went to the gal­lows, 36 years ago.  With the Quran as his con­stant com­pan­ion, his reg­u­lar read­ings of Is­lam made him a man of God for the in­mates of Del­hi’s Ti­har Jail No 3. The fa­ther of mod­ern Kash­miri na­tion­al­ism -Maq­bool Bhat in­vari­ably re­cited Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s lines -“Jis dhaj se koi maq­tal mein gaya wo shaan sala­mat re­hti hai, Ye jaan to aani jaani hai, is jaan ki koi baat nahin -“The glory that one car­ries to the gal­lows sur­vives, the life is tran­si­tory, it’s not of great im­por­tance,” dur­ing his last days be­fore be­ing ex­e­cuted, re­calls Ti­har prison jailer Sunil Gupta in his mem­oirs –Black War­rant, re­viewed here by Kash­mir ob­server Kan­war Pal Singh.

IN THE EARLY MORN­ING HOURS OF 11 FEB­RU­ARY 1984, Maq­bool Bhat was hanged in Ti­har prison in the pres­ence of a sub-di­vi­sional mag­is­trate with­out al­low­ing him a meet­ing with his lawyer and his fam­ily. His black war­rant was ob­tained in a hurry with a case still pend­ing in the Delhi High Court and he was buried in Ti­har Jail No. 3.

Mus­lim in­mates of the prison pre­pared his grave with the last prayers and rites car­ried out in Is­lamic tra­di­tion by a Mus­lim clergy from a Masjid nearby to the jail.

In­dia was in a grand hurry to hang him soon af­ter the killing of In­dian en­voy to the UK -Ravin­dra Ma­ha­tre. All mercy pe­ti­tions, re­view pe­ti­tions were dealt within just three days. Sunil Gupta be­lieves that Maq­bool was hanged al­most overnight for some­thing he was only re­motely linked to.

Maq­bool was ar­rested and sen­tenced to death for killing a CID of­fi­cer in Jammu and Kash­mir while try­ing to cross over to Pak­istan.

“The prison record of Maq­bool Bhat was as spot­less and pure as the spot­less, pris­tine and sparkling white kurta-py­jama that he wore.”

Two years later, he and an­other in­mate dug a 38-foot tun­nel and es­caped to Pak­istan ad­min­is­tered Kash­mir.

Fur­ther­more, he was ar­rested in con­nec­tion with the hi­jack­ing case of IA flight to La­hore in 1971. Maq­bool served three years im­pris­on­ment in Pak­istan too along with hi­jack­ers Hashim and Ashraf Qureshi. Upon re­lease, he re­turned to In­dia in 1980 af­ter un­suc­cess­fully try­ing his hand in Pak­istani pol­i­tics.

On re­turn, he was cap­tured and the Supreme Court up­held his decade-old death sen­tence.

“The prison record of Maq­bool Bhat was as spot­less and pure as the spot­less, pris­tine and sparkling white kurta-py­jama that he wore.”

Gupta de­scribes that on 6 Feb­ru­ary 1984, hours af­ter the In­dian gov­ern­ment learnt about Ma­ha­tre’s bul­let-rid­den body, the cab­i­net com­mit­tee un­der Mrs In­dira Gandhi de­cided to hang Bhat im­me­di­ately. The Di­rec­tor-Gen­eral Pris­ons was sent to Sri­na­gar to get Bhat’s black war­rant. It was as ap­par­ent as day­light that the state was act­ing in re­venge.

Gupta has penned down ac­counts of eight death sen­tences in Del­hi’s Ti­har Jail dur­ing his tenure, of which I am shar­ing the fi­nal hours of Maq­bool Bhat.

The au­thor of the book, who de­vel­oped a per­sonal rap­port with Bhat says that the Quran was his con­stant com­pan­ion and he would do reg­u­lar read­ings, tak­ing on the halo of be­ing a man of God for the peo­ple in Ti­har, rather than be­ing seen as a ter­ror­ist.

Throw­ing out all pro­vi­sions of the Jail Man­ual, his brother and even his lawyer were not al­lowed to meet him one last time. His brother was ar­rested at Sri­na­gar air­port while he was on his way to Delhi to see him. His lawyer, also a Kash­miri -R. M. Tu­fail came to see his client but was de­nied per­mis­sion.

On page 79 of the book, Gupta records the trav­esty of jus­tice in the case. The gross lapse by In­dia to hang some­one with­out ex­haust­ing all ju­di­cial av­enues.

Gupta writes, “the ab­sur­dity and tragedy of the way Bhat was hanged, can be seen by the fol­low­ing in­ci­dent. Jus­tice Anand’s court had sched­uled a hear­ing of Maq­bool’s case a few days later (af­ter the hang­ing) where the Court was of­fi­cially in­formed that the 45-year old pe­ti­tioner has been hanged just a week be­fore his birth­day. The Delhi High Court judge sent a no­tice to the gov­ern­ment ask­ing why had he been hanged when his case was still un­der re­view in court. The jail au­thor­i­ties in­formed the ho­n­ourable judge that the or­ders to hang him came from the com­pe­tent au­thor­ity. And there ended the ju­di­cial fight against Maq­bool’s hang­ing”.

If this is de­scribed as a ju­di­cial mur­der by Bhat’s lawyers and hu­man rights de­fend­ers, what is wrong with that?

Gupta opines that Maq­bool Bhat was a po­lit­i­cal pris­oner and he was also treated as one.

The for­mer law of­fi­cer of Ti­har prison re­mem­bers Maq­bool Bhat not as a founder of the Jammu and Kash­mir Lib­er­a­tion Front -JKLF or as a sep­a­ratist but as a highly ed­u­cated, pi­ous in­mate, who was pas­sion­ate about the free­dom of Kash­mir.

The jailer says loud and clear, “Bhat was a vic­tim of cir­cum­stances. He be­lieved that had the In­dian diplo­mat Ravin­dra Ma­ha­tre not been kid­napped and mur­dered in Birm­ing­ham, Bhat would have sur­vived the gal­lows. In­dia failed to take into ac­count that The Kash­mir Lib­er­a­tion Front which kid­napped and killed the In­dian diplo­mat had noth­ing to do with Bhat’s JKLF, ex­cept that they had de­manded the re­lease of Bhat.

The au­thor of the book, who de­vel­oped a per­sonal rap­port with Bhat says that the Quran was his con­stant com­pan­ion and he would do reg­u­lar read­ings, tak­ing on the halo of be­ing a man of God for the peo­ple in Ti­har, rather than be­ing seen as a ter­ror­ist. The jailer has show­ered full praise for his in­mate and ad­mit­ted that as an ed­u­cated pris­oner Bhat was use­ful to them in draft­ing memos, charge-sheets and other doc­u­ments.

So much so, that Gupta, in all hon­esty, says that he im­proved his Eng­lish lan­guage draft­ing skills due to his in­ter­ac­tions with Maq­bool Bhat.

“Jis dhaj se koi maq­tal mein gaya wo shaan sala­mat re­hti hai, Ye jaan to aani jaani hai, is jaan ki koi baat nahin -The glory that one car­ries to the gal­lows sur­vives, this life is tran­si­tory, it’s not of great im­por­tance.” 

Faiz Ahmed Faiz as quoted by Maq­bool Bhat

Like some other known pris­on­ers of Ti­har who pe­ti­tioned courts and jail au­thor­i­ties through Pub­lic In­ter­est lit­i­ga­tions to bring respite to pris­on­ers of Ti­har, Bhat also con­tributed a lot in chang­ing the lives of in­mates. He pe­ti­tioned au­thor­i­ties about stock­ing re­li­gious books in jail and was suc­cess­ful in this as­pect. Bhat fought against the pro­vi­sions of the Prison Man­ual which de­scribed sta­tion­ary as con­tra­band and won the right for pris­on­ers to keep sta­tionery.

As a last wish, Maq­bool Bhat was al­lowed to leave a will. A Sikh mag­is­trate was called a day be­fore the hang­ing. Bhatt got his will recorded in Eng­lish. He ex­erted, “There will be many Maq­bool Bhats that will come and go, but the free­dom strug­gle in Kash­mir should con­tinue”.

Sunil Gupta has ad­mit­ted that the prison au­thor­i­ties, act­ing on their own “re­al­ized the sen­si­tiv­ity and the po­ten­tial in­flam­ma­tory con­se­quences that such a mes­sage would have and so we sent it to the of­fice of the con­cerned gov­ern­ment au­thor­ity.” Ob­vi­ously, the In­dian au­thor­i­ties nei­ther made it pub­lic or gave it to his fam­ily.

The day af­ter his ex­e­cu­tion, when his lawyer Tu­fail and his le­gal team at­tempted to re­trieve Bhat’s be­long­ings, they were de­tained. Know­ing Bhat’s affin­ity with Gupta, the fam­ily ap­proached him for Bhat’s Kurta-py­jama and books, but the law of­fi­cer con­fesses that he was could not help the fam­ily. Sub­se­quently, the books, in­clud­ing the works of Sartre and Will Du­rant be­came part of the li­brary in Jail No. 3.

Maq­bool Bhat’s coun­sel Tu­fail shared with Gupta that once he asked Maq­bool that since he is a trained per­son in var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, did he ever think of es­cap­ing? Bhat, ap­par­ently told Tu­fail that there was no place to es­cape to, as he did not find pride for Kash­miris -nei­ther in In­dia nor in Pak­istan.

“There will be many Maq­bool Bhats that will come and go, but the free­dom strug­gle in Kash­mir should con­tinue”.  

Till date, the gov­ern­ment has de­nied re­turn of the mor­tal re­mains of Maq­bool Bhat and Afzal Guru. Both were buried in Ti­har. In a rare co­in­ci­dence, the trial courts in both cases is­sued the black war­rants on Fri­day. Af­ter re­al­iz­ing that the hang­ing would gen­er­ate mas­sive street protest in the val­ley af­ter the Fri­day Na­maz, the dates were changed.

Gupta has been hon­est in ex­press­ing his feel­ings about this high-pro­file in­mate, whom he called an “in­ter­na­tional fig­ure”. He said that he had mixed feel­ings about Bhat’s hang­ing. He ad­mit­ted that Bhat was pun­ished for his anti-In­dia ide­ol­ogy. To be hon­est, he says, “I was a bit ex­cited know­ing well that Bhat’s hang­ing will have pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions.”

Ex­press­ing his views about his days at the Ti­har prison, Gupta writes that the prison cell -the phansi kothi, as it is called in In­dia, was never a pleas­ant part of the jail. He ad­mits be­ing wary of the dreaded phansi kothi only af­ter Bhat’s hang­ing.

He ac­counts that once while walk­ing by, an in­mate shouted out Sir, Sir! See Maq­bool is stand­ing there. He was cry­ing and swore that he saw him wear­ing a white Kurta-py­jama. The Tamil Nadu Spe­cial po­lice guard­ing the area also re­ported sim­i­lar sto­ries. Many of them ap­par­ently ‘saw’ Maq­bool Bhat stand­ing near his grave. Some in­mates truly be­lieved in the benev­o­lent spirit of Maq­bool Bhat. They told the writer of the book that he came in their dreams and told them they would be soon free. In some cases, ap­par­ently it proved to be true”, ad­mits Gupta.

This writer has had the priv­i­lege to visit Tre­hgam -the an­ces­tral vil­lage of Maq­bool Bhat along with hu­man rights ac­tivist and WSN ed­i­tor Prof Jag­mo­han Singh and late Prof SAR Gee­lani. It was an ho­n­our to seek bless­ings of his mother Bibi Shah­mala and share his life and times with his sis­ter and other mem­bers of the fam­ily. I was im­pressed to see that the house where he lived, in­clud­ing all his be­long­ings had been pre­served for pos­ter­ity.  The walls of the Kucha house adorned his writ­ings -slo­gans and thoughts about the free­dom of Kash­mir.

How many moth­ers like that of Maq­bool can be at peace af­ter sac­ri­fic­ing four sons at the al­tar of a just cause! Ameen!