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'Pak should not be trusted'

Kashmir militant leader Maqbool Butt, who was hanged in New Delhi 15 years ago for murder, was thoroughly disillusioned with Pakistan.

He poured his heart out in a letter to his daughter Azra from a jail in Lahore in April 1973. ''The Pakistani (ruling) clique has never had an interest in freedom for Kashmiris. They only talk and they should not be trusted,'' he wrote in reply to her complaint that, despite Kashmiris' sacrifices for Pakistan, that country calls them spies.

Butt's letters -- written from different jails in Pakistan and finally from the Tihar jail in New Delhi, where he was imprisoned for eight years before his execution -- have been compiled by Mohammad Saeed Asad in a book, Shaoor-e-Farda (understanding of tomorrow).

''Those very Pakistani rulers who felt no compunction in gunning down their own countrymen were now punishing Kashmiris.'' He was referring to the massacre of Bengalis by the Pakistani army.

Mohammad Ashraf Qureshi, who gave an introductory note to the life and leadership of Butt, writes that Butt returned to Srinagar in 1976 in desperation when he became convinced that Pakistan could not be trusted.

''His return to Srinagar was an indication of his frustration with Pakistan: here (Srinagar) the high court had already sentenced him to death for killing an Indian official and it was here that he managed to escape from jail.''

Qureshi, who had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane from Srinagar to Lahore in January 1971, now teaches Kashmiriat in Punjab University. He discloses that the training for hijacking the plane was given by a former Pakistan air force pilot in Rawalpindi to Hashim Qureshi.

It was Maqbool Butt who chose Hashim Qureshi for the job. But, after the hijacking, Butt and his comrades received one shock after the other.

The very fist was an offer of unlimited amount of money to him from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir's so-called president Abdul Qayyum Khan if he declared that the hijacking was a feat of the guerillas of Al Mujahedeen, an organisation that Qayyum ran.

After this, Butt and others were tortured in the Shahi Qilla of Lahore and other jails notorious for torture devices. When they were released from jails, then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto offered to make Butt prime minister of PoK if he joined his Pakistan People's Party.

Butt realised Pakistanis were making fools of Kashmiris and fled to Srinagar with his companions in 1976. That turned out to be his last journey.

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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