‘Merchant of death’ and JeM mastermind shot dead

srinagar — He was just four feet two inches tall and walked with a limp. Noor Mohammed Tantray, the Jaish-e-Mohammed commander who was gunned down on Tuesday, stood out in a crowd but his mental acuity more than made up for that disadvantage, officials said.

Called “merchant of death” by a special court in Delhi, Tantray was believed to be the brains behind several terror strikes, including the attack on the BSF camp outside the Srinagar airport on October 3 and on state minister Naeem Akhtar’s cavalcade in Tral on September 21 this year.

The end came during the intervening night of December 25 and 26 at Samboora in Pulwama district of South Kashmir, not far from his home in Tral.

The killing of the 47-year-old JeM divisional commander, who was out on parole, is a “significant blow” to the terror group’s operations in the Valley, officials said. “We had missed him only by few minutes in the past and I was sure he would run out of luck soon as his height was his biggest disadvantage. With each passing day, the search narrowed,” a senior police official, involved in the operations, said on condition of anonymity.

Tantray’s limp also made it difficult for him to disappear into a crowd and police officials were sure they would be able to isolate him. After escaping from the Aripal encounter — in which three JeM militants were killed — at Tral in April this year, Tantray had been on the radar of the Special Unit of the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

Their efforts to track him down finally bore fruit on Christmas night when he was trapped in a house and could not escape. His two other accomplices, believed to be foreign militants, managed to flee, an official said.

Tantray, who spent eight years in Tihar jail, had intensified his activities since his release on parole in 2015.