A handsome young man. A dedicated engineering student. An aspiring writer. A professional hiker. A loving son. A doting brother. This is how close friends of Basit Rasool Dar describe him.
Basit, who was in his early twenties, was killed on Wednesday morning in a brief shootout in Bewora village near south Kashmir’s Bijbehara town.
A civil engineering student at the Islamic University of Science and Technology in Awantipora, Dar had joined militant ranks two months ago, according to a police official stationed in south Kashmir.
Dar was operating under the nom de guerre of Sameer. He had been missing from his home for the last two months.
According to Jammu & Kashmir police, Dar was a close aide of Hizbul Mujahideen commander and Burhan Wani’s successor Zakir Moosa, an engineer himself.
"A Painter, Writer and an Explorer"
An avid reader, Dar started a blog (www.basitrasoolsam.wordpress.com) last year where he described himself as a painter, writer and “an explorer of new things”.
In his first blog post, published last year on 26 December, ‘Saz loung, the traditional Kashmiri sport or hopscotch,’ he lamented the death of Kashmiriyat in the face of “Westernization”.
“The Kashmiri culture has lost its glory in Kashmir... As per my thoughts, in next few years, Kashmiri culture will be seen in museum’s only,” Basit wrote in the concluding paragraphs of his blog post.
"Don’t Betray the Blood of Martyrs..."
A native of Marhama village nears Bijbehara, which falls in the constituency of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, Dar belonged to a well-off family. His father is a banker.
Thousands of people from adjoining villages thronged his native village to attend the funeral prayers as soon as his body was handed over by police to his family.
Hurriyat (G) Chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is under house arrest, addressed the mourners over telephone. “Don’t betray the blood of martyrs by casting votes,” he told the gathering.
“My Name is HUMANITY”
Dar posted his last blog some six months before he joined Hizbul Mujahideen. In a heartbroken voice, Dar wrote about the agony of a person who was beaten mercilessly by police personnel for not carrying his identity card.
He wrote about the people who helped the person regain consciousness and how they tried to ascertain his identity.
He wrote:
The man said, “Where are you from?”
“I am from a country known as the LAND OF PEACE”.
“What is your name,” the question followed.
“My name is HUMANITY.”
After his death, one of his friends wrote on social media: “See, you did what you always wanted to.”
“I vividly remember how we used to steal snacks from each others’ bags at school. As if it was yesterday. Today you are a martyr,” another friend tweeted.
In the last few years, dozens of young militants with impressive academic records and degrees have joined the militancy and were later killed in gunfights with the forces.
Earlier, on 20 November, Laskhar-e-Taiba’s Rayees Ahmad Dar, who had a diploma in civil engineering, was killed by security forces. Similarly, another BTech student-turned-militant, Saif Ullah Ahangar, was killed in May 2013.
“Who Will Send Me Write-Ups About Kashmir Now?”
On social media, Dar’s friends described him as a “dedicated person”.
On 2 February this year, he was travelling to Banihal in a train when he wrote ‘An Hour At Railway Station,’ a blog post about his experience of waiting at the station. He apparently wrote it during his train journey.
“Right now a person is interrupting me because his bag is on the stand over my head. Now he is gone and so is I until next article, (sic)” he wrote, wrapping up the short post.
This foggy morning, when the news of Dar’s death after a brief exchange of firing poured in , a friend, who edited his blog, tweeted: “Who will send me write-ups about Kashmir now? Will I get to edit one more? (sic).”
(The writer is a media professional and an aspiring researcher based in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir. He can be reached at @RoufBhat_. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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