PHD scholar Mannan becoming trend among Kashmiri youth
ISLAMABAD, (MILLAT ONLINE):In occupied Kashmir police have said that the PhD scholar, Mannan Wani, who has reportedly joined the ranks of Mujahideen, is fast becoming a trend among the Kashmiri youth, like martyr Burhan Wani. Mannan Wani, a PhD scholar in applied geology at Aligarh Muslim University, will be one of the three PhD scholars to join the Mujahideen since the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Mannan, a resident of Tekipora village in Kupwara district, appeared in a Mujahid attire in a photograph that went viral on social media recently and shows him posing with an assault rifle.
“It is clear what has happened,” his brother Mubashir Wani, an engineer, told media, referring to the photograph. He said Mannan came home in October last year and left for Aligarh in December. “We lost contact with him on January 3,” he said.
A senior police officer in Kupwara said that Mannan Wani’s father had filed a report that his son was missing for the last several days. He said that the police were investigating if Wani had joined Mujahideen ranks.
“We don’t know the authenticity of the picture. We haven’t been able to trace him so far and all possibilities are being investigated,” said Shamsher Hussain, SSP, Kupwara.
Pictures with weapons, like that of Wani, have become a trend among new mujahid recruits in the region.
The recruitment has registered a significant increase in the region in the last two years, with many of the new recruits coming from educated backgrounds and having high academic qualifications.
Azharuddin Khan, one of the three research scholars who joined the ranks and had qualified for PhD in Arabic, was martyred in February, last year. He was a resident of Kandi, Kupwara, and was a lecturer at a higher secondary school in Handwara before joining the Mujahideen in April 2016.
The third research scholar who became a mujahid in two years was Sabzar Bashir of Naina village of Islamabad district and joined the freedom path in July 2016.