'Suicide, Not Martyrdom': Son Of India's First Hijacker Slams Delhi Bomber

More than a week after the deadly suicide bombing outside Delhi's Red Fort, Kashmiri political analyst Junaid Qureshi, son of India's first aircraft hijacker, Hashim Qureshi, has issued a blunt condemnation of the attacker and called for Kashmiri society to confront terror "from within".

In an interview with NDTV, Junaid Qureshi, Director of the Amsterdam-based European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), rejected both the ideology and religious justification used by suicide bomber Umar Nabi, whose pre-recorded video went viral on social media before being deleted by Meta.

At least 15 people were killed and over 30 injured in the blast outside the Red Fort, the most serious terror attack in the national capital in over a decade and a half.

"I've never claimed that legacy," Qureshi said, referring to his father, Hashim Qureshi, who hijacked Indian Airlines flight 'Ganga' from Srinagar to Lahore in 1971. "I always rejected his act of terrorism."

Turning to the Red Fort bomber's video, Qureshi said Umar was trying to "intellectually dress up" a suicide attack as martyrdom in Islam. "He tries to find foundations in religion, but it is suicide. He has committed suicide and killed more than a dozen innocent people," he stressed, calling the attempt to link the blast to martyrdom "a distortion of Islam."

Quoting Islamic tradition, Qureshi pointed out that the Prophet "refrained from leading funeral prayers" of those who died by suicide, arguing that this leaves no theological space for glorifying suicide bombings. He said Muslim scholars worldwide have repeatedly made clear that such attacks are religiously impermissible, but those statements alone are no longer enough.

"We Kashmiris, or we Muslims, can keep on saying this is not Islam, which is true, but the time for just saying that has gone. The time for action is here," he said.

As an example, he cited cases from Egypt and Lebanon where families of suicide bombers refused to accept their bodies or perform last rites as a public rejection of their actions. Qureshi said Kashmir now needs similar moral clarity.

"We need candlelight marches in Delhi against this Red Fort blast," he said. "The parents of Umar Nabi, his mohalla and his friends should say, "We will not take his body because he is a shame to our culture, a shame to our family, and most importantly, a shame to our religion."

Qureshi also highlighted what he called a "hypocrisy" in parts of Kashmiri society - where terrorists are condemned in articles and TV debates, yet given massive funerals on the ground. "There is a discrepancy between what we are trying to say and what we do," he said. "We are preaching something different and doing something different."

On recent intelligence reports of attempts to revive banned separatist groups and recruit women into terror modules, including alleged female facilitators in the Delhi blast plot, Qureshi warned that women in Kashmir are being cynically exploited.

"When it suited these terrorists, women were told to sit at home, wear burqas, not work. When it suited them, the same women were used for smuggling and other activities," he said, urging Kashmiri society to resist the use of its "most victimised" section in violent campaigns.

Qureshi linked the new patterns of recruitment and radicalisation to what he described as Pakistan's shifting strategy after international exposure of its proxy war in Kashmir. According to him, Pakistan's military establishment is now trying to make the conflict appear "Kashmiri-owned" - by pushing educated youth, including doctors and professionals, into terror networks and creating new Kashmiri-labelled outfits.

"This strategy of making it Kashmir-owned will give Pakistan plausible deniability in the world," he argued, warning that if moderate Kashmiri voices fail to act decisively now, "at some point the world will stop believing us" when they say terrorism does not represent their religion or culture.