Srinagar: The killing of Lashkar-e-Toiba’s Riyaz Ahmad Dar in a gun battle in Pulwama district on Monday (June 3) has pulled the curtain on the career of one of the longest-surviving militant commanders in Kashmir, who kept the security forces busy with his evasive strategies.
Hailing from Sethar Gund village in the restive Kakpora locality of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, sources said that Dar became active in the summer of 2015 at a time when the Hizbul Mujahideen’s former commander, Burhan Wani, was creating ripples on social media.
However, unlike Wani, Dar, an ‘A’ category militant, kept a low profile and worked in the shadows while launching a number of alleged attacks on security forces and civilians in parts of south Kashmir, which made him a deadly figure for security forces operating in the Valley.
According to sources, Dar, who figured in the list of Kashmir’s 21 most wanted militants in 2018 alongside the Hizbul Mujahideen’s chief operational commander Riyaz Naikoo, followed the old school of militancy by coordinating his attacks through a hybrid network of operatives to evade security agencies.
Naikoo, an ‘A’ category militant who took over the reins of the Hizbul Mujahideen after Burhan Wani, was gunned down in an encounter in 2020.
On Monday morning, the sleepy south Kashmir village of Nihama, which is hemmed in by sprawling paddy fields and apple orchards, was shaken by the deafening exchange of gunfire between a group of militants and dozens of police personnel and army soldiers who were backed by automatic rifles, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers.
A man stands next to a bullet-riddled wall inside the house where the military operation took place on Monday. Photo: Umar Farooq.
A local from Nihama told The Wire that security forces laid a cordon around the village on Sunday night when the villagers were preparing to retire to their beds.
“Militants were trapped in the residential house of Bilal Ahmad Lone, a poultry farmer. Early in the morning, I was sleeping when the sound of gunshots rang in the air,” said the villager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a statement, the J&K police said that Dar and his associate Rayees Ahmad, a resident of Lerve in Kakpora, were gunned down in the encounter in Nihama, which lasted for nearly 12 hours.
“The operation was carried out cautiously to avoid any damage to the adjoining buildings in the village,” said a senior police officer.
A view of the damaged house. Photo: Umar Farooq.
The police officer quoted above said that the operation was launched on specific intelligence inputs about the presence of a group of heavily armed militants in the village.
Witnesses said that the double-storied residential house, where the Lashkar-e-Toiba militants met their end, was reduced to a pile of charred debris in the encounter, while some of the adjoining houses in the village also suffered partial damage such as broken windowpanes due to the impact of the firing and heavy blasts that were used to take down the duo.
Vijay Kumar Birdi, Kashmir’s inspector general of police Kashmir, said that the militants opened fire when security forces tightened the cordon around the house.
As the encounter ended on late Monday afternoon and security forces moved out of the village along with the bodies of the two militants, several woman, some of whom had come from the adjoining villages, were seen wailing profusely near the site of the encounter.
People gather around the site of the military operation in Nihama. Photo: Umar Farooq.
Few women were seen beating their chests while some men scoured the debris to salvage copper and other metal items from the debris of the smouldering house.
The encounter in Nihama took place less than a month after Basit Ahmad Dar, the operational commander of The Resistance Front, which the police believe is an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, was gunned down in an encounter in the adjoining Kulgam district of south Kashmir.
Basit Dar, also an ‘A+’ category militant, was wanted by security forces in at least 18 cases involving attacks on security forces and civilians in Kashmir. The National Investigation Agency had put a Rs 10 lakh reward on his head after his alleged involvement surfaced in some attacks on minority community and security forces.
At least ten militants have been gunned down by security forces while eight civilians also lost their lives in the insurgency-related violence in Jammu and Kashmir this year so far.
