Zubair Qureshi
Veteran writer, former federal secretary and founder of his own political party, Masud Mufti was laid to rest on Wednesday in Islamabad’s H-8 Graveyard.
He had breathed his last a day earlier on Tuesday due to cardiac failure.
Though held with all the SOPs for coronavirus in place, Mufti’s funeral prayer was attended by a large number of friends, members of the family, Mufti’s contemporary writers, poets and intellectuals who had come to say adieu to a man who was a witness to Pakistan’s formative years, its rise and fall, from birth in 1947 to dismemberment in 1971. Masud Mufti in fact had served in the former East Pakistan (Bangladesh) as a bureaucrat and was also taken as Prisoner of War (POW) for two years. Among those who attended his funeral prayer included former chairmen Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) Iftikhar Arif, Dr Qasim Bughio, current chairman Dr Yousuf Khushk, Director General (DG) National Language Promotion Department (NLPD) Dr Rashid Hameed, Hameed Qaiser, Dr Ghazanfar Mehdi, Muhammad Hameed Shahid, Mehboob Zafar, Zafar Bakhtawari and many others.
Masud Mufti completed his matriculation at the time of independence and joined the civil service in 1958. He was deputy commissioner of Larkana, commissioner of Lahore, a prisoner of war for two years and observed multiple changes in government until his retirement in 1994.
While talking to Pakistan Observer after the funeral prayer, Iftikhar Arif said Masud Mufti had left a lasting impact on Urdu literature. He furnished a valuable document in his reportage about East Pakistan, which was a part of our history. “It goes to the credit of Masud Mufti and Siddique Salik that they wrote faithfully and forcefully about East Pakistan like none other,” said Arif. Mufti’s Rasm-e-Dua will be held at his home in Sector F-6 on Thursday (today) privately due to coronavirus.
