Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court on Tuesday sought responses from the J&K Waqf Board and Union Territory administration on a petition filed by Kamal-ud-Din Farooqui seeking his reinstatement as the Imam of Kashmir’s most revered shrine — Dargah Hazratbal— from where he was removed in 2024 following a conversion row.
“Somebody had accepted Islam as a religion. What was Farooqui’s role in that? His name is not in the FIR. The police registered a case and named a local, Inayat Muntazir, in whose house the man was working as a domestic helper. Farooqui was not named in the FIR.
Farooqui filed the petition in the high court on September 10 against the April 08, 2024, Waqf Board order, which was listed for hearing on Tuesday. The case was filed under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc.), 153 (giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 298 (uttering words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) and 188 (disobedience to order promulgated by a public servant) of the Indian Penal Code.
“The court issued notices to the respondents,” the counsel for the petitioner said. The court heard our arguments,” he said.
Farooqui, a prominent academician and scientist at Sher-e Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology and retired as a professor, has said that his family has been performing the duties of dargah’s imam for the past three centuries and that the religious legacy of his forefathers will be lost if he is not reinstated. He took over as the imam in 2018 after his brother’s death.
“The petitioner belongs to the Farooqui family, whose association with Aasar-i-Shareef Dargah Hazratbal is stated to extend over several centuries,” the petition said.
