In October 1993, the J&K Liberation Front's (JKLF) militants breached the security ring outside the revered Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, dashing straight for the mosque's inner compound, where they took worshippers and staff as hostages.
The insurgency had just begun to explode in Kashmir and the administration had lost all semblance of control.
The hostage crisis at Hazratbal was a major security lapse. The militants had three major demands: the curfew across the Valley to be lifted, the captors be given a safe passage, and that the holy relic [a strand of hair from Prophet Muhammad’s beard enclosed in a glass ampoule] be authenticated.
For the then police chief of J&K Mahendra Sabharwal, the development could have serious implications, for 30 years prior to this episode, another similar event [involving a theft of a holy relic by unknown actors] had plunged J&K into a big political crisis that set in motion a tumultuous chain of events culminating in the India-Pakistan war of 1965.