Desperate for Indian visa to perform mother’s last rites, Bhim Singh’s son apologises for London protest

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi dated May 2, he wrote, “I, Ankit Love, son of late Prof Bhim Singh and late Adv Jay Mala, resident of the UK, hereby sincerely apologise for my mistake of pelting eggs and stones at the Indian High Commission in the UK, which I deeply and sincerely regret.”

Seeking forgiveness, he appealed for urgent visa approval to visit “my Union Territory – Jammu and Kashmir – which is in India”. He also wrote that he was misguided by “some other people surrounding me, which led to this mistake, which I sincerely apologise for”.

“…I assure you that henceforth there will be no such act by me against my nation, which I love very much and am very much proud of,” Love wrote, adding that his late father Bhim Singh had also fought all his life for the full accession of Jammu and Kashmir with India.

He wrote that he did not wish to move to Jammu permanently, and that the government could allow him to take his mother’s body from the mortuary “to Devak in Udhampur, under police cover, and once I perform her last rites, it can make me board the returning flight to UK”.

Jay Mala, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, died on April 26, and her body has been at the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu since then, even as family members aligned on opposite sides for control of the JKNPP battle it out over the cremation.

Jay Mala’s niece Mrignayani Slathia has sought that the body be handed over to her, and argued that the chances of Love’s arrival from the UK are “bleak”. Slathia accused Jay Mala’s nephew, former J&K minister Harsh Dev Singh, of creating the impasse by posting on Facebook that there should be a postmortem of the body.

Harsh Dev told the media that it was Love who wanted a post-mortem.

In a Facebook post late Wednesday night, Harsh Dev appealed to Ankit Love “to shun his obstinacy and allow Mala Ji’s body to be cremated”. “It’s 8 days now,” he wrote.

According to Slathia, Jay Mala had been staying with her at Domana in Jammu before her death, and had taken a fall from the stairs at home on April 25 evening. She died at Government Medical College Hospital the next day.