Former Kashmir High Court Bar Association president and separatist ideologue Mian Abdul Qayoom has been arrested in connection with the murder of lawyer and TV panellist Babar Qadri, four years after the killing, police and family sources said.

The police sources said he was summoned by the State Investigation Agency (SIA), which is investigating the case, early on Tuesday where he was formally arrested.

Qadri, 40, was shot dead in September 2020 shortly after he uploaded a video where he feared an attack by Qayoom — who had all along denied the allegations.

Two men wearing masks and posing as clients had allegedly entered his home in the Hawal area of Srinagar and shot him dead.

The police had registered a case at Lalbazar police station for murder under Section 302 of the IPC, 7/27 of the Arms Act and Sections 13, 16, 18, 20 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

“He (Qayoom) has been arrested and is being questioned in the case,” an official said.

It is the first high-profile arrest after a pledge of a new hard line by police chief R.R. Swain against alleged militant supporters.

Swain on Sunday said they were likely to arrest alleged militant supporters under the harsher Enemy Agents Act/Ordinance (EAA/O), which he said entailed a punishment of life imprisonment or a death sentence.

Qadri was dubbed pro-India and pro-Azaadi alike by his critics on two sides. He was a strong advocate of Azaadi but faced criticism from the camp for fiercely opposing Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Qayoom.

Last year, the SIA had filed a chargesheet in Qadri’s killing which named five people for their alleged involvement. Qayoom’s name, however, was not there.

The government had formed a special investigation team (SIT) soon after Qadri’s killing. The police later said The Resistance Front (TRF), believed to be a shadow group of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was behind his killing.

The police also named a TRF militant, Saqib Manzoor, in connection with the killing. He was killed in a gunfight in 2021.

The case was later taken over by the SIA, which in 2023 announced a reward of ₹10 lakh for information leading to his killers.

In 2022, the police raided the house of Qayoom and two other lawyers and conducted searches in connection with the case. They had seized a digital device and some documents from their residences.

Qayoom had served as Bar chief multiple times in the past. He has faced arrests on several occasions. As head of the Kashmir Bar, he was among thousands who were arrested during a clampdown in 2019 to prevent protests against the scrapping of Article 370.

He was booked under the Public Safety Act but released the next year, only to lead a quiet life, shunning his hardline separatist rhetoric.

In 2020, the UN’s five special rapporteurs called Qayoom’s continued incarceration a reprisal for his opinions and claimed he was being denied a free trial.

Qayoom is the father-in-law of sitting high court judge Justice Javid Iqbal, making him the first Kashmiri Muslim to be elevated from the bar to the bench during Modi’s six-year rule.