Pulwama mastermind slain
He was among three terrorists to be killed; five Army men, including a major, martyred; DIG, brigadier, colonel injured
Top Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, alias Kamran, suspected to be the mastermind of the attack on the CRPF convoy at Pulawama, is among three terrorists who were killed in an overnight encounter.
Five Army men, including a major, were also martyred. A deputy inspector general of police, a Rashtriya Rifles commander of the rank of brigadier and a lieutenant colonel were injured.
The encounter came on the heels of the local police and Army jointly launching a cordon and search operation at Pingilana village in Pulwama district. The terrorists came out firing during house-tohouse search based on intelligence input that some of those in the back-up team of the Pulwama attack were hiding in the village, not far away from the Jammu-Srinagar highway.
Home Ministry sources said suicide bomber Adil Ahmed Dar, a local school dropout who worked as a mason, was only driver of the car that hit the CRPF bus and he could not have acquired expertise in just 11 months of recruitment to assemble 100 to 200 kg of explosives.
A security agency report has claimed it was an Afghanistan-trained IED expert who smuggled the explosives from across the border in Kathua district and assembled the lethal mix.
In the line of suspicion had been Ghani, alias Kamran, a close associate of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who was suspected to be hiding somewhere in south Kashmir.
The security forces stumbled on his hideout on Sunday night.
2 BRAVEHEARTS LOST IN 3 DAYS
According to Army sources, Major Vibhuti Dhoundiyal of Dehra Dun is among those who died in the overnight encounter with terrorists in Pulwama. The officer was just 34 years old and is survived by his wife Nikita Kaul. And this, just when the last rites of Major Chitresh Bisht were still underway in Haridwar. Bisht was killed on Saturday while defusing a mine on the Line of Control in Nowshera sector. He was cremated in Haridwar on Monday afternoon. Sepoy Hari Singh, Sepoy Ajay Kumar, both 27, and 37-year-old Havaldar Sheo Ram were also killed in the 12-hour encounter. They hailed from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, respectively.
ACE RECRUIT:
In photos released by security agencies, Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, alias Kamran, suspected to be the mastermind of the attack on the CRPF convoy, is a thin, nondescript man sitting holding an AK-47 rifle. But the deceptively lethal terrorist in salwar kameez was the "chief operational commander" of the Jaish-eMohammad. He was known to be an ace terror recruiter tasked with radicalizing and training terrorists in the Kashmir Valley. Sources say Kamran had been hunted for years but had managed to stay off the radar as he travelled from village to village to initiate young men into terror. The Pulwama suicide bomber was his recruit.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday slammed the Narendra Modi government for ‘politicising’ the Pulwama terror attack and demanded its ouster for its "failure" to take precautionary measures despite an intelligence alert of a possible attack.
Banerjee also accused the Rashtriya Swyamsevak sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to incite communal violence in her state.
"So many jawans have been killed. We seek punishment for the perpetrators, but responsibility for the negligence must also be fixed. There should be an investigation into the incident," said Banerjee while speaking to reporters at the state Secretariat - Nabanna.
Alleging that last month an American intelligence advisory had warned of communal violence in India in the name of elections, the Chief Minister asked: "Why was action not taken despite this intelligence report?"
"Why was a convoy of 78 vehicles transporting over 2,000 troopers allowed to go together when the government had information about a possible attack? Why were precautionary measures not taken? Why have so many people died?" asked Banerjee.