In Baila village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, almost everyone remembers Qari Mohammad Iqbal for two things – for being a Hafiz-e-Quran, someone who has memorised the entire Quran, and his soft-spoken, calm demeanour.
“He was a very patient person. Even if someone was harsh or rude to him, he would talk politely,” said Chirag Din, a relative from Baila. “He would never argue or fight with anyone.”
The head of the Jamia Zia-Ul-Uloom seminary in Poonch city where Iqbal worked for over two decades agreed. “He would never talk back even if I reprimanded him,” said Maulana Sayeed Ahmed Habib. “For him, everything revolved around his duty as a teacher.”
The 47-year-old, who spent his life memorising the Quran or helping others learn it by heart, died doing his duty as a teacher. In the early hours of May 7, Iqbal was at the seminary when he was hit by splinters of a shell that was fired on Poonch city by the Pakistan army.
But the denigration that followed his death shocked all those who knew him. In the coverage following the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan over the Pahalgam terror attack, several news channels in Delhi and the National Capital Region labelled Iqbal a “Pakistani terrorist” who had been “neutralised” during the Indian military strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. They also used his picture in their broadcast.
“It was like rubbing salt on our wounds,” said one of the residents of Baila, asking not to be identified. “How can the media label such a humble and pious human being as a terrorist?”
Though Poonch police immediately rebutted the claims of the news channels and issued a statement asserting that Qari Iqbal was a “respected religious figure in the local community and had no affiliation with any terror outfit”, they did not register a case against the news channels, as the family had demanded.
Eventually, a social activist in Poonch city, with the support from Iqbal’s family members, moved a local court in Poonch district of Jammu on May 28, seeking a first information report against the news channels.
“The fake news didn’t only vilify one particular community of Poonch but also hurt the feelings of our Hindu and Sikh brethren,” said Sheikh Mohd Saleem, who filed the petition. “By labelling a respectable citizen as a Pakistani terrorist, these news channels didn’t only hurt the feelings of his family but defamed the entire Poonch district.”
On June 28, the court directed the police to register a case against the erring television news channels.
In its order, the court observed that while some news channels had tendered an apology after their mistake was pointed out, that should not have stopped the police from registering a case. “…the act of branding a deceased civilian teacher of a local religious seminary as a ‘Pakistani terrorist’, without any verification, particularly during a period of Indo-Pak hostilities, cannot be dismissed as a mere journalistic lapse,” wrote Shafeeq Ahmed, the special mobile magistrate, Poonch.
He directed the police to file an FIR under multiple sections including those pertaining to public mischief, defamation and promoting enmity between religious groups, and ordered a “fair, impartial and time-bound investigation”. He also sought a compliance report from the station house officer of Poonch in seven days.
For a relative of Iqbal, the cleric’s vilification was an example of the Islamophobia peddled by a section of Indian news media. “He just fit the stereotype these TV channels have about Muslims – a practising Muslim in shalwar-kameez with a long beard [was easy to demonise],” the relative added.
Under fire
On the morning of May 7, hours after India launched Operation Sindoor – military strikes at alleged terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir – the peace along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir lay in tatters.
Pakistan responded by firing shells at border areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The shelling was intense in Poonch city, a border town where Pakistan has an edge owing to its control of the heights. “The shelling started in the night, soon after India announced that it had launched military strikes on Pakistan,” said Ishtiaq Ahmad, a resident of Poonch.
The city was in panic but Iqbal had not wavered from his routine.
Before dawn broke, he had reached the seminary to take his class. “Those who are memorising the Quran have to take classes before the sunrise,” said Maulana Sayeed Ahmed Habib, chairman of the Zia Ul Uloom group of institutions that ran the seminary.
After his class and morning prayers, Iqbal retired to his room in the seminary.
Around 8 in the morning, one of the shells fired by Pakistan landed on the roof of an under-construction building in the seminary compound. The explosion was so big that splinters tore through the seminary hostel opposite it. Parts of the shell landed outside Iqbal’s room.
“The splinters tore through the door of his room and one of them hit him on his mouth,” said Habib. A few seminary students were also injured in the blast.
At the time of the incident, Maulana Habib said, the seminary management and staff was engaged in moving students to safer locations within the campus or sending those who lived nearby to their homes. “When we heard that Qari Sahab got injured, we immediately took him to the nearby hospital,” he recalled.
Habib recalled Iqbal coming out of his room on his own and walking to the ambulance. “It just looked like a small cut on his lips but he was bleeding profusely,” he said.
Within 30 minutes, Iqbal had breathed his last at the hospital, making him one of the first Indian civilians to be killed in Pakistani shelling in the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor’.
In the four days of military clashes between India and Pakistan, Poonch district bore the brunt, with 15 civilian deaths, including several children.
‘We want to set a precedent’
When news channels based in the National Capital Region began to call Iqbal a “terrorist” killed in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Choudhary Tariq Manzoor, one of his nephews, called up the police.
“We informed them about the fake news. Thankfully, they issued a statement about his innocence but they did not register an FIR,” Manzoor told Scroll.
Saleem, the advocate who filed the petition in court, said he initially requested the Poonch district magistrate to order the registration of a case against the culpable news channels on social media. However, there was no response. “On May 22, I approached Poonch police authorities by submitting an application for an FIR. When there was no response, I approached the court on May 28,” said Saleem.
Iqbal is survived by his two wives and eight children, one of whom is disabled and three are under the age of 10. With Qari Iqbal’s first wife, Naseema Begum, unused to dealing with strangers, other relatives and villagers have taken up cudgels on his behalf.
Getting a case registered against the news channels involves sending a larger message, they said. “We want to set a precedent,” said the relative, who did not want to be identified. “We don’t want these news channels to think that they can label any poor man from a remote village a terrorist and go scot-free. We will not stop without teaching them a lesson.”
