Sheikh Abdullah’s grave wears deserted look on his birth day

SRINAGAR: The authorities imposed restrictions around the lakeside mausoleum of Kashmir’s legendary leader Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah in Srinagar’s Naseem Bagh area on Thursday to prevent a mass gathering at the mazaar on his 114th birth anniversary.

While a contingent of the Jammu and Kashmir police stands guard at the Sheikh’s grave round-the-clock throughout the year, its neighbourhood was placed under the strict security restrictions .

However, later during the day, people were —individually or in small numbers — allowed to enter the mazaar area on the western shore of the Dal Lake to offer fateha (prayers for the dead). Among them were the Sheikh’s younger daughter Suraya Abdullah, her husband Dr Ali Muhammad Mattoo and National Conference (NC) MP Hasnain Masoodi. Also lay buried at this mazaar is the Sheikh’s wife Begum Akbar Jehan.

The Sheikh’s eldest child Begum Khalida Shah who heads Awami National Conference (ANC), a splinter group of the NC, said that she was denied permission to visit the mazaar even after she had moved an application before the concerned authorities for it. “I’m very sad. It is rather painful that a daughter is denied permission to visit her father’s grave on his birth anniversary”. She said that heavens would not have fallen if she had been allowed to visit the mazaar?”.

She quipped, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be scared of even the dead people.” A statement issued by the ANC added, “Forget the living, it is our dead who send shivers down his (Modi’s) spine.”

Ms.Suraya after visiting the mazaar told reporters, “Where are our people who wanted to be here on this occasion. They were not allowed even to offer fateha to their great leader. My sister, brothers and other family members could not come either. This is very unfortunate.”

The Sheikh’s progeny, political successors — former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah — and most of the other leaders and activists of his NC party are either under detention or have been placed under house arrest since August 5 when Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its special status and split up into two Union Territories .stones for hospitals, educational institutions, bridges and other  public welfare projects and schemes to pay tribute to the Sheikh both on his birth and death anniversaries.