New Delhi, Dec 29: Pledging his full support to the Centre's peace initiative in Jammu and Kashmir, Hashim Qureshi, founding member of the JKLF, who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Pakistan in 1971, made a dramatic return to India today after 30 years of exile, and was arrested after a four-hour-long drama at Delhi airport.Fortyseven-year-old Srinagar-born Qureshi flew into the capital by a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen and surrendered to the immigration authorities, who after four hours handed him over to Delhi police.Main yahan Vajpayeeji ke peace initiative ki himayat karne aya hoon (I have come here to support Vajpayee's peace initiative)," Qureshi shouted towards a battery of waiting mediapersons at the Patiala House courts, where Metropolitan Magistrate Gulshan Kumar remanded him to judicial custody till January 11.Qureshi, who was one of the founders of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Rawalpindi in 1982, said hum chahte hain ki Kashmir mein zulm aur khoon kharaba bandh ho, chahe jiska bhi ho (we want the end of oppression and bloodshed in Kashmir, whoever be the victim).""We want an independent Kashmir and that's why I am here," he said while being whisked away by the police after the court remanded him to 14-day judicial custody.Qureshi had hit international headlines when he hijacked an IA Fokker Friendship on a flight from Srinagar to Jammu which was later blown up at Lahore airport after all the passengers alighted.Qureshi's lawyer, Vikas Pahwa, submitted before the court that his client had already been sentenced to life imprisonment in Pakistan and had spent over nine years in jails there in the hijacking case.Pahwa said before sending Qureshi to judicial custody, the court should peruse the allegations levelled in the case which was registered against him in 1971 at Srinagar, but lamented that the case diary was not produced before the court today.Qureshi and six others were sentenced by a Special Court in Pakistan to rigorous imprisonment for a total of 19 years. However, later the Pakistan Supreme Court released him after he spent nine years and three months in various Pakistani prisons and torture cells.On being released in 1980, Qureshi went on a self-imposed exile, first to the United Kingdom and then to The Netherlands where he was settled for the past 14 years.Meanwhile, a team of the Jammu and Kashmir police arrived here this evening in connection with the case.The court allowed Qureshi to see his two brothers and sister in the court complex after he sought its permission saying "I have been longing to see them for all these years".In the absence of any legal provision to tackle hijacking in 1971, the Jammu and Kashmir police had charged Qureshi with illegal confinement besides sedition in the FIR registered against him in Srinagar.In an appeal issued a week ago, Qureshi had said he was "determined to create a conducive environment in the state for the upliftment of the downtrodden".Qureshi has been consistently attacking Pakistan's ISI after having earlier refused several offers by the Pakistani intelligence agency to co-operate with them.In his book "Kashmir - The Unveiling of Truth", Qureshi said he sensed threats to his life from the ISI and had been warning the JKLF leadership not to play into the hands of the Pakistani military authority and their intelligence outfit.Following differences with the JKLF leadership including its present chief Amanullah Khan, he later floated the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Liberation Party (JKDLP) and is now its chairman.According to Qureshi's book, JKDLP wanted to end the atmosphere of hatred and animosity between India and Pakistan and oppose religious extremist elements and their political formations which "have turned the Kashmir issue into a religious clash only to serve their self-interest".The JKDLP, he said, believed that a solution to the Kashmir imbroglio could only be found by uniting the several small "nationalities" of the state."Our party believes that Kashmir has the tradition of secular culture and that people of different faiths can continue to co-exist in a peaceful atmosphere."It strongly supports rehabilitation of some sections of its people forced out from any part of the state after 1947," he said, adding that JKDLP wanted to "reverse the gun culture and, keeping in mind the international political climate, it would strive to obtain the rights of the people through a non-violent `intifada'(liberation war)".During the Kargil war by Pakistan, Qureshi had attacked Islamabad for sending soldiers inside the Indian territory in Kargil.
