Farooq Abdullah won’t attend AS Dulat’s book launch, daughter Safiya confirms

Former J&K chief minister and National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah won’t attend former Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) chief AS Dulat’s book launch, his daughter Safiya Abdullah Khan has confirmed.

The book, “The Chief Minister and The Spy”, scheduled to be released today (on Friday) in New Delhi, had triggered a political storm over the author’s claims that in 2019, when Delhi revoked Kashmir’s autonomy under Article 370, Abdullah had publicly condemned the move as a “betrayal” but privately, he backed it.

Earlier on Thursday, Abdullah’s son and J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah had told reporters in Jammu that Dulat shouldn’t expect his father’s presence at the launch given the controversy.

On Friday, Safiya, while responding to a journalist’s question on social media site X, wrote, “I can put you out of your misery. He is NOT attending.”

The entire NC and it’s leaders are up in arms against the former RAW chief for “portraying wrong information” in his book, and have termed his claims a “figment of his imagination”.

Abdullah has already said that Dulat is resorting to cheap stunts to boost the sales of his book. “This book is full of mistakes. It’s sad, if he considers me his friend, and wrote such wrong things,” he said.

Opposition leaders, meanwhile, termed the contents of the book “credible which exposes duplicity of the NC”.

People’s Conference chairman Sajjad Lone said, “Personally, I’m not surprised at this revelation. The August 4, 2019, meeting of CM sahib (Omar Abdullah) and Farooq sahib with the PM was never a mystery for me.”