Nine Most Wanted Rebels Leading Kashmir
Militancy
Azhar Qadri
SRINAGAR: Nine ‘most wanted’
militants, including five locals and four Pakistanis, who operate from various
parts of south, central and north Kashmir, are leading militancy in the region.
All the militants are of the rank of commander and belong to Hizbul Mujahideen,
Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
No other militant outfit, whose
numbers once ranged in dozens, is active in the region, according to police
records.
In recent years, militancy had
receded to record levels in Kashmir as most of the commanders and cadres of
militant outfits were killed in gunfights, diminishing their capacity to carry
out large-scale attacks.
However, since March this year,
militants have carried out deadly attacks and ambushes in the region, killing
more than 30 soldiers, paramilitary personnel and policemen, including 16
fatalities in Srinagar.
The five local militants,
categorised as ‘the most wanted’, include Qayoom Najar who operates in the
Sopore area and Talib Lali who operates in the Bandipora area. Qayoom is Hizbul
Mujahideen commander for Sopore and Talib is the group’s commander for
Bandipora in north Kashmir, according to a confidential police document.
Sajad Ahmad Bhat, a resident
of Srinagar’s Zewan area, is Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, who had recently
featured along with two others in a ‘wanted’ poster pasted by the police in
several parts of Srinagar. Sajad became a militant five to six year ago and has
since been operating in south Kashmir, with his occasional sightings being
reported in the city, a police officer said.
Mohammad Muzaffar Naikoo is
Lashkar-e-Toiba’s district commander in the Sopore region. A police officer,
however, said the militant from Sopore is operating as a “freelancer” since the
arrest of the group’s divisional commander, Fawad, alias Fahadullah, in April,
which wiped out the group from the area.
Bilal Ahmad Bhat, who
operates in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district and is associated with
Lashkar-e-Toiba, is the last of the five local commanders who have been
categorised as ‘A plus plus’ or as most wanted by the police. He is a resident
of Pulwama district.
Among the four Pakistani
nationals leading militancy in Kashmir is Qasim, reported to have been in the
Valley for the last nearly three years and operates from south Kashmir. Qasim
and Sajad, along with another local militant, Irshad Ahmad Gania, a resident of
nearby Awantipora, who became a militant nearly two years ago, are suspected to
have carried out the ambush on the Army on the city outskirts last month, in
which eight soldiers were killed and 16 injured.
Another foreign militant
leading the region’s militancy is Qari Yasir. In police records, Qari is the
divisional commander of Jaish-e-Mohammad and operates from the dense forest of
the Lolab region of frontier Kupwara district.
Another Jaish-e-Mohammad commander
operating from north Kashmir is Hamza Kocha, a Pakistani national, according to
police records.
In central Kashmir,
Pakistani militant, Huraira, operates in the Kangan-Theed forest belt which
touches the outskirts of Srinagar city and a large swathe of Ganderbal
district. Huraira is among the ‘most wanted’ militants of Lashkar-e-Toiba in
the region.
The number of militants
operating in the Kashmir valley is estimated to be around 130 to 150.
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