The life of Mohammad Rafi Bhat, an assistant professor at Kashmir University, as a militant lasted less than 36 hours as he was among the five militants killed in an encounter with security forces in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.
As the family members carried the bullet-ridden body of the lecturer, who was killed in Shopian district of south Kashmir during an encounter, inside the house, every ten minutes, one of his students started breaking down.
Bhat, a resident of Chundina area of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, was a contractual assistant professor in the Sociology department of the university and went missing around 3.30pm on Friday.
Back in Chunduna, more than Rafi’s death what has shaken the entire area is the professor’s decision to join militancy. Though he survived for less than 40 hours in his new incarnation, Rafi was perhaps the most educated militant in 27 years of insurgency in Kashmir Valley.
Police in the Shopian district said when they came to know that Rafi was trapped inside the house, they halted the operation and got his family. “But they refused to surrender,” said Shalinder Misra, SSP, Shopian.
Rafi Bhat’s involvement with militancy began sometime late afternoon on Friday and ended after he was trapped within a cordon set up by security forces at Badigam in Shopian late on Saturday night.
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