Ashraf Sehrai Tests Covid-19 Positive Posthumously

SRINAGAR: Detained Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, who died in a hospital in Jammu, has tested positive for covid-19, official sources said on Wednesday.

The septuagenarian was shifted from Udhampur jail to GMC hospital Jammu yesterday, sources said.

While he had tested negative for covid-19 on rapid tests, his swab came positive for the pathogen after his death, they said.

Sehrai was detained last year and booked under Public Safety Act.

The 76-year-old was considered as a strong contender to take over as chief of the Hurriyat Conference after its former chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani, in a letter, announced his dissociation from the amalgam.

Sehrai’s stature among Hurriyat leaders had risen when his son Junaid joined militancy immediately after he was elected as chairman of the TeH — a political party Geelani had founded with Sehrai after parting ways from their parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir — after Geelani’s resignation in 2018. Junaid was killed in an encounter in Srinagar on May 19 last year. (GNS)