The swab sample of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, who died in a hospital in Jammu while under detention, has tested positive for COVID-19, official sources said on Wednesday.
The septuagenarian was shifted from Udhampur jail to GMC hospital Jammu yesterday.
While he had tested negative for COVID-19 through RAT, his swab tested positive for the pathogen after his death, news agency GNS reported while quoting sources. Sehrai was detained last year and booked under Public Safety Act.
The 76-year-old was considered as a strong contender to take over as chief of the Hurriyat Conference after its former chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Sehrai’s stature among Hurriyat leaders had risen when his son Junaid joined militancy immediately after he was elected as chairman of the TeH — a political party Geelani had founded with Sehrai after parting ways from their parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir — after Geelani’s resignation in 2018.
Junaid was killed in an encounter in Srinagar on May 19 last year.