Bhat was born into a Sufi Muslim family in Jammu and Kashmir, India, sometime in the late 1970s.[10] His father was associated with Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front.[11] In 1986 during a police raid on his home, his sister Sharifa was thrown down a flight of stairs, following which she became bed-ridden. She died in 1992 at the age of 18.[a] Bhat dropped out of school as a teenager, and in 1991, at the age of 13, he joined a Kashmiri militant group called Al-Umar-Mujahideen,[8][11] which he remained part of until his arrest in 1994.[13][1] He was arrested and spent three years in prison, during which he was tortured and subjected to electric shocks. A nail was driven through his jaw.[14][15] He remained under police surveillance after his release. An injury to his right arm as a result of the torture had left him unable to lift anything, and he has relied on his brothers to support him since then, saying he feels as if he is 110 years old.[16] He lives in Srinagar, where he began participating in demonstrations in 1997. Due to his angry look, he was often photographed by journalists. He took part in protests against the Indian Army, Israel, Pope Benedict XVI, Salman Rushdie, and the cartoons caricaturing Muhammad.[17]
Speaking to The Guardian about his photograph becoming viral on the internet, he said:
I am not happy with people joking about me or making me into a cartoon, but I have more important things to think about. My protests are for those Muslims who cannot go out onto the streets to cry out against injustice. This is my duty and I believe Allah has decided this for me.[1]
According to Free Press Kashmir, by 2021 he had "intermittently spent 24 years and 4 months" in different prisons across India and had 276 FIRs against him.[10] He married in 2020.[10]
^According to Patrick French, a British writer who interviewed him in 2007, his home was raided sometime following the beginning of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, where his 18 year old sister was thrown out of a window. She broke her spine as a result and died four years later at the age of 22.[12] According to Free Press Kashmir, which interviewed him in 2021, his sister was thrown down a flight of stairs in 1986 when she was 12, becoming bed-ridden as a result, and died in 1992 at the age of 18.[10] According to a 2011 Hindustan Times story, his sister died in 1994 after suffering a heart attack during a police raid at the age of 14.[11]
^ abPatrick French (27 January 2011). India: A Portrait. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 464–. ISBN978-0-14-194700-6. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 7 June 2019. Shakeel aged all of thirteen, decided to join other young men and go to Pakistan for military training. He was so small that he had to be carried on an older boy's shoulders when he went over the mountains. In Muzaffarabad on the Pakistani side of the border, he was taken to a snow-covered training camp run by the ISI in conjunction with the militant group Al-Umar mujahideen. Armed with an AK-47, he returned to a safe house in Srinagar, hoping — in what now seems a very impractical way — to drive out the Indian troops. 'I thought Kashmir should have the right to self-determination, he said. Shakeel not an effective militant. When I asked him how many people he had killed, he looked embarrassed. 'I gave scares, but I never killed anyone. I couldn't.
^French, Patrick (27 January 2011). India: A Portrait. Penguin Books Limited. p. 332. ISBN978-0-14-194700-6. When separatists started to fight Indian rule in Kashmir, the security forces arrived. Police who were searching for militants raided Shakeel's home, and threw his beloved eighteen-year-old sister Shareefa out of an upstairs window. She broke her spine, and died from her injuries four years later.
^Malkin, Michelle (29 June 2007). "Laughing at Islamic Rage Boy". michellemalkin.com. Archived from the original on 20 November 2010. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
