A Separatist’s Son Is Scaring The Home Minister’s Daughter: Sajad Lone Grills Mehbooba Mufti’s Agency Claims

“No matter how much drama you do, you will have to unconditionally apologize,” Lone declared, adding that his party would run daily social media campaigns until the apology was made.

He dismissed PDP’s renewed focus on the People’s Conference as a deliberate diversion, saying, “All of a sudden, you have now found Sajad Lone, you found the People’s Conference, just so that attention can be diverted somehow.”

Turning to the PDP’s recurring claims about agencies breaking political parties, Lone was blunt. “In Kashmir, not even Jammu and Kashmir, just in Kashmir, one party keeps saying 24 hours a day, ‘Agency people are breaking me.'”

He argued that since PDP was itself built by agencies from existing political stock, Congress workers from South Kashmir, National Conference members from Central Kashmir, and People’s Conference workers from the North, Mehbooba assumed the same of every other party.

“They were handed a khichdi, which is called a Coalition of Individuals. If any individual runs away from them, they drop to zero in that constituency.” He backed his argument with numbers, noting PDP’s vote share fell from 36 percent in 2014 to just 2.5 percent in 2024. “This is what you call a non-party. Agency wonders are exactly this. Rebels on rent are exactly this. People left, the party ended.”

Contrasting this with his own party’s track record, Lone said People’s Conference retained a stable and organic vote bank. “I promise, if we make Sheikh Imran Sahab contest from Kupwara tomorrow, we will get the same votes because it is our party’s vote. We do not have any agency vote.”

He then posed a pointed question that struck at the heart of PDP’s narrative. “Just imagine for five seconds, the agencies are doing this at Sajad Lone’s behest. The one you go to Delhi and call a separatist’s son. You are the Home Minister’s daughter. Meaning, a separatist’s son is scaring the Home Minister’s daughter?”

He added that by branding every political figure an agency operative, Mehbooba was defaming the entire political class of Kashmir. “She is abusing our political system. She is abusing our political leaders. Is everybody on sale here?”

Lone also turned the lens on PDP’s own history, reminding the audience that it was late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who split the National Conference in 1983 while heading Congress and again facilitated its fracture.

Today I will not stay quiet either, enough is enough. I am not a punching bag. You were the Chief Minister of BJP and the blame is on me? Your father was the Home Minister; agencies reported to him. He was their boss. You are the daughter of the boss of agencies! How dare you talk like this?”

Lone then gave a detailed account of what he described as years of political targeting by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. When he announced his intention to contest parliamentary elections in 2009, he said an agency official called him within days to dissuade him.

Simultaneously, in a PDP party meeting, Mufti Sayeed responded to his name being raised by saying, “Are you guys agency people? The agency people must have picked him up.” Lone noted bitterly that at the time he was surviving with only two policemen while militancy was at its peak. “It is called a white-collar killer: if we kill him, let’s kill him. This is the real face,” he remarked.

He further accused PDP leaders of holding a meeting at a former DIG’s house in Drugmulla just days before the 2014 assembly elections, where he said Naim Akhtar urged voters in Handwara to transfer votes to the National Conference solely to defeat Lone.

“The problem is that out of those 15-16 people, 10 are with us today,” he said. He challenged those named to accompany him to the Haram in Saudi Arabia and swear he was lying, adding, “I will never come to Kashmir in my life if I am wrong.”

Invoking WikiLeaks, Lone accused Mehbooba Mufti of telling a foreign diplomat that the Congress-led government had channelled one crore rupees through the IB to support a candidate secretly affiliated with him.

“This is WikiLeaks. You tell me, does this come under treason or not? If it were me, I would have been locked up for espionage.” He recalled spending two months in interrogation custody.

Closing on Kashmir’s darkest political chapter, Lone held Mufti Mohammad Sayeed directly accountable for the highest civilian death toll in the Valley’s history, including killings in the funeral procession of Moulvi Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq. “The number one killing name is Mr. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Number two goes to the rest. Let them challenge me I am wrong. If they challenge me, I will apologize.”

He ended with a question aimed squarely at Mehbooba Mufti over her appearance at Gen Z protests in Delhi while hundreds of young Kashmiris were killed or detained under the Public Safety Act during her own tenure as Chief Minister. “With what face did you go there? This pellet-queen of here must answer.”