New Delhi: Even before parliament abrogated Article 370, many of Kashmir’s top separatists were either put under detention or house arrest. It was a smart pincer move to ensure that these rogue elements didn’t raise Cain and manufacture trouble as is their wont.

All these malevolent separatists were locked down, cutting the head of the snake to ensure that control of ground zero

In a calibrated and systematic intelligence agencies run operation coordinated by NSA Ajit Doval in conjunction with the newly appointed Union Home Minister Amit Shah, all these malevolent separatists were locked down, cutting the head of the snake to ensure that control of ground zero remained with the Valley’s security apparatus.

Many wonder where are Syed Ali Shah Geelani and company, as Kashmir increasingly appears to embrace the changed political reality. The dragnet necessitated that the hawks were put under detention, so that they did not foment trouble and this has worked like clockwork.

SAS Geelani, the senior-most Hurriyat leader, has been kept in the confines of his two-storey Hyderpora residence. Someone who gave many a shutdown calls before and after terrorist Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces in 2018 is now left incommunicado at his house. Meanwhile, his son-in-law Altaf Fantoosh is lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi for his anti-India activities, a case registered by NIA making his life miserable.

Meanwhile, another separatist leader Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, who is facing a money-laundering investigation, is in his Nigeen Lake residence. His wife Sheeba Masoodi along with his daughters are, however, safely away in the United States.

Interestingly, Mirwaiz, who is also the head of the Jamia mosque in Srinagar, didn’t spew any anti-India venom after the Friday prayers as many expected. To the contrary, he has reportedly chosen to sermonise about drug abuse, leaving many to wonder whether he too has toned down his rhetoric. But leopards don’t change their spots and the PMLA cases may have had a sobering effect on him.

Yasin Malik was a dreaded name at the height of terrorism in Kashmir when he presided over ethnic cleansing of Pandits from the Valley and gunned down four Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in cold blood. He was a part of the notorious HAJY gang comprising Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javed Ahmed Mir and himself who were also election agents of Muhammad Yusuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin, the Hizbul Mujahideen terror outfit operating form Pakistani soil.

Syed Salahuddin and his group that had chosen the path of terrorism, were instrumental in the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. The nation paid heavily to secure the release of Ms Sayeed in exchange for 13 terrorists. Even the abduction of Rubiya was under clouds as people in know of things claimed that the act was orchastrated for release of arrested dreaded terrorists.

Most of the HAJY gang members are dead today and Malik is lodged in a high-security cell of Tihar jail in Delhi. Malik, along with Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani and Javed Ahmad Mir, formed the core group — dubbed the “HAJY” group — of the JKLF terrorists in the Kashmir Valley.

The enormity of popular support received for their call for independence surprised them. Within two years, the JKLF in the Valley emerged as the “vanguard and spearhead of a popular uprising” against the Indian state.

The JKLF waged a terror war with the Indian security forces and targeting attacks on the government and security officials.

In March 1990, Ashfaq Wani was killed in an encounter with Indian security forces. In August 1990, Yasin Malik was captured in a wounded condition. He was imprisoned until May 1994. Hamid Sheikh was also captured in 1992 but released by the BSF to counteract the pro-Pakistan terrorists. By 1992, the majority of the JKLF terrorists were killed or captured.

Asiya Andrabi is a burqa-clad, anti-India venom spewing chief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, an outfit that has links with Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba which is headed by UN designated global terrorists Hafiz Saeed that advocates jihad. Andrabi’s organisation has been declared as a terrorist organisation by the government. She too is in Tihar jail right now facing the music, along with two of her aides.

To give company to Malik in Tihar, there’s Shabbir Ahmed Shah, another Hurriyat leader.

Masarat Alam is the General Secretary of Hurriyat Conference. In 2010, he played a crucial role in stone-pelting in the Valley that injured many security personnel. At different times, he has had as many as 27 criminal cases lodged against him and the count simply doesn’t stop. Someone who had proudly said “I’m a stone thrower since childhood” is right now kept in the notorious Kot Bawal jail in Jammu under the Public Safety Act.

Meanwhile, other players like Abdul Gani Bhat is kept arrested in his Wazir Bagh residence. Maulana Abbas Ansari, the Shia leader in the Sunni dominated ecosystem of Kashmir, has been a vocal anti-India voice. Right now he is in Chhattabal.

Bitta Karate or Farooq Ahmed Dar was a name that evoked strong fear in the nineties for carrying on genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, had accepted on television interviews of killing multiple Kashmiri Pandits to enforce an ethno centrist genocide is today a prisoner in Tihar.

Nayeem Ahmed Khan, the Chairman of Jammu Kashmir National Front and provincial President of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, is another vitriolic speaking machine who is now booked under money laundering charges and giving company to his fellow jihadists in Tihar. He is the same man who was stung in an operation where he had accepted that he used to get money from Pakistan to fuel unrest in the Valley, even if that meant burning down of schools.

Kashmir has been a playground for these forces all these years. They had the audacity to unfurl a Pakistani flag on 14th August and release videos from unknown locations in the Valley espousing Islamic jihad. Today all of them are either behind bars or left cut off in their homes as Kashmir and Kashmiris welcome a new dawn of hope, opportunity and equality.