Manan Wani

In the morning when the security forces went inside the house to collect the bodies, militants again fired upon them, starting a fresh crossfire. The operation ended in the afternoon, and police took custody of both the bodies. Clashes erupted at the village where the encounter took place and the police resorted to teargas to disperse protestors.

Additional troops had been deployed in Sogam area, where Wani lived, since morning.

Wani, who was enrolled as a PhD scholar with the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), joined militant ranks in January this year and later was spotted with militants in South Kashmir sporting an AK-47. He joined Hizbul Mujahideen and was tasked with attracting educated young men to militancy.

Wani during his days as active militancy wrote two detailed articles for the news portals explaining why he was forced take the gun.

‘We are soldiers, we join the war not to die and live but to fight the enemy and defeat him,” he had written. “Resistance is resistance; it can neither be peaceful nor violent. In fact, violence is not that we have picked up gun to fight occupation but violence is the presence of more than 12 lakh Indian armed men in Kashmir, violence is the presence of fortified army garrisons, bunkers and pickets, and occupation in itself is the biggest violence.”

Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq called for a shut-