AJK president laid to rest with state honours
2026-02-02 - 03:16
MIRPUR: Thousands of people converged on a playground in this lakeside city on Sunday to pay their last respects to President Barrister Sultan Mahmood, as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) bade farewell to a veteran leader who rose to prominence at a relatively young age and went on to play a long and decisive role in the region’s politics. The 70-and-a-half-year-old president, who breathed his last in an Islamabad hospital on Saturday evening after protracted illness, was accorded a gun carriage funeral — a state honour reserved for figures the state considers of exceptional national importance. On Saturday, the coffin was transported directly from Islamabad to the president’s ancestral village of Chechiyan, located about 15 kilometres on the outskirts of Mirpur. On Sunday, it was brought in a large vehicular procession to the Quaid-e-Azam Cricket Stadium in the heart of the city, where it was draped with the AJK’s national flag and placed on a military gun carriage before being taken into the packed ground amid full ceremonial protocol. In Pakistan, a gun carriage funeral is typically accorded to presidents and prime ministers, chiefs of the armed forces, highly decorated military officers, and, on rare occasions, national figures whose services are deemed extraordinary, symbolising that the deceased is being mourned not merely as an individual but as a national asset. The funeral prayer was led by Qazi Muhammad Rafique, the spiritual leader of Gulhar Sharif — the most revered shrine in the neighbouring Kotli district — at around 4pm, after which police contingents presented a guard of honour to the late president. Prominent among the mourners were AJK Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, Acting President and Legislative Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar, heads of political and religious parties, chief justices and judges of the AJK’s superior courts, cabinet members, the Commander 10 Corps, and other senior military and civilian officials. Mr Mahmood’s son and cabinet member Yasir Sultan briefly addressed the gathering. Later, the coffin was taken by ambulance to Chechiyan for burial in the family’s ancestral graveyard alongside his parents. Acting President Chaudhry Latif Akbar, Information and Religious Affairs Minister Rafique Nayyar and several other cabinet members were present at the burial. Meanwhile, as the Chechiyan area is home to the renowned shrine of Baba Peera Shah Ghazi (Kharri Sharif) and its annual Urs falls on Feb 2-3, Mr Nayyar directed the administration to observe restraint in view of the AJK government’s three-day mourning for President Mahmood. Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2026