Kashmir Watch News Service

London, September 29: Contrary to the news items regarding Kashmir.com being owned since 1997 by the Indian Army, the real story is that UK based Kashmiri IT Engineer Mr Khurshid Nahami claims to be the real legal owner of this domain name, and he has the paperwork to prove this. This domain name was stolen from him by the Indian Army in May 2002 using sophisticated methods at a time when the regulation and security of the names managed by Network Solutions (at the time one of a few companies allowed to register domain names on behalf of customers) was very lax, Khurshid Nahami disclosed to Kashmir Watch here today.

Khurshid Nahami said that unfortunately this event occurred at a time when he was going through difficult personal circumstances and was not able to devote enough time to getting it back. This does not mean this he did not try to get it back. In fact he contacted lawyers, journalists and Network Solutions to get the domain name back. However as it was one of the first events of this type he was unable to receive good advice and was basically informed that the theft had been carried out in such a way that it would be very difficult for him to get the name back without spending substantial amounts of money, into the tens of thousands of dollars, which he could not afford. Added to this it was explained as it was a state entity who had taken the name and especially one in India then it would also be extremely difficult.

Although he tried different methods to investigate how the name had been stolen and to try to get it back but failed due to being unable to allocate enough time and resources.

“The theft of this name has left a scar on me for the last 5 years because behind this domain name is a long and personal story.” Mr Nahami said.

In the early 1990 he worked in the technology field and got early exposure to the internet.

“As I originally hale from Kashmir I became interested in acquiring the name Kashmir.com. To my disappointment the name had already been taken. I traced the owner who turned out to be an American who had registered it because the legendry British rock group Led Zeppelin had a song by the title Kashmir, which was and is one of their most well known. I told this American of my deep love for Kashmir and my birthplace and my wish to have the name. To my amazement he said that I could have it for free and in 1997 he transferred it to me.” Mr Nahami claimed.

“ As the events in Kashmir unfolded in the 1990's I could not stand idly by and thought that I would try to explain the Kashmir problem from my own perspective. I put some pages up on it, which incidentally can still be seen, for the period 1999 to 2002, using the "way back machine" on the website www.archive.org, (which is like a museum for web sites and stores the web site pages as they looked at different time). The pages created were perhaps the most mild pages with regard to Kashmir and urged a non violent solution and urged Pakistan and India to let the Kashmir people decide their own fate." Mr Nahami further claims.