Srinagar court orders arrest of hijacker Hashim Qureshi's son in assault case

A court in Srinagar on Friday denied bail and directed the immediate arrest of Junaid Qureshi, son of Ganga airline hijacker Hashim Qureshi, in connection with an alleged assault that left his father critically injured.

The court ordered that the accused be taken into custody without delay and handed over to the Nishat police station. In its order, the court observed that a man who would ordinarily expect care and protection from his children in his later years is, on the material placed before it, battling a serious injury allegedly inflicted by one of them.

The judge said the case diary and hospital records had been examined and showed Hashim Qureshi to be in a critical condition. A prima facie viewing of footage, the court noted, appears to show the accused pushing the victim, after which he fell down a flight of stairs and suffered a head injury.

Hashim Qureshi was admitted to a private hospital in Srinagar in a critical state on September 3 after the alleged altercation, described as a family dispute, and has remained under treatment since, according to his family. An First Information Report was registered at the Nishat police station under Section 109 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Hashim Qureshi drew international attention in 1971 when he and an accomplice allegedly hijacked Ganga, an Indian airliner bound for Jammu from Srinagar, and diverted it to Lahore in Pakistan. He spent time in a Pakistani jail, later moved to Amsterdam and returned to Jammu and Kashmir in 2000.

His son Junaid Qureshi is a director of the European Foundation for South Asian Studies, an Amsterdam-based policy research think tank, and has addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on human rights issues.