Farooq Khan: From J&K cop to BJP leader to charge of UT

Newly appointed Lakshadweep administrator Farooq Khan, 61, is a retired IPS officer who led anti-militancy operations in Kashmir. He led the police action that led to the clearing of the Hazratbal shrine in 1996. The 1994-batch IPS officer retired in 2013 in the rank of inspector general of police.

Khan joined the BJP ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir elections last year. The Dogri-speaking Punjabi Muslim was subsequently given charge of the BJP’s minority morcha and the party’s affairs in Nagaland.

Last year, Khan had told The Indian Express that the RSS is the “cleanest” organisation whose “leaders have given up worldly things”. In a recent interview on the ongoing unrest in Kashmir, he told this newspaper: “The youth in Kashmir have always behaved in a manner that defied logic. Kashmir has always had this problem — they defy logic.”