After Kashmir’s freedom, India will realise Wani was a fighter: father

In an interview with the Times of India (TOI), he said it was very difficult to bear his son’s loss and added, in the last five years, he hardly met him.

He pinned hopes that “When the problem of Kashmir will be solved, India will realise Wani was a freedom fighter.”

“Burhan’s killing had brought a new light in this movement of freedom,” Wani’s father said.

“It is necessary to solve the Kashmir problem,” Muzaffar Wani told TOI and stressed, “The better way is a dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Muzaffar Wani said that more than 100 people have been killed in held Kashmir during the last two months and has not even shown any grief. Instead, he only expressed grief over the killing of Indian soldiers.

 

Who was Burhan Wani?

Burhan Wani, whose death on July 8 in a shoot-out with Indian forces triggered deadly clashes with protesters in Indian-held Kashmir, was the son of a headmaster who excelled at school before he left home aged just 15 to join the region’s largest separatist group.

Wani’s father has said he took the decision after he and his brother were stopped by Indian forces on their way home and “assaulted and humiliated”.

“Our young pick up guns because of the daily humiliation and torture they face here,” Muzaffar Wani told AFP in a 2014 interview, adding, “My son is not the first one. But if he dies for his self-respect and his people, he will be a martyr.”

By the age of 21, he had become the most senior Hizbul Mujahideen leader in the held valley.

The death of his brother Khalid Wani last year also sparked an outpouring of public sympathy as well as angry protests.