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madeaninnocuouscall:hehadunexpected guests for Eid. The SOG’S Srinagar unit reached Anantnag just after lunchtime to brief their counterparts in the SOG and the Army’s 19 Rashtriya Rifles on plans to reach Bamdoora without attracting attention.

The man they were looking for was a Kokernag cloth salesman called Sartaj Ahmad Sheikh — before becoming the man the SOG most wanted dead, he used to be one of their treasured assets.

”Sartaj Ahmad Sheikh had become the critical link between the Hizbul Mujahideen’s leadership in Pakistan and their units in south Kashmir. He was the man charged with putting guns in the hands of Burhan Wani’s boys,” said a senior police officer.

Like over a hundred other young Kashmiris, Sheikh had crossed the Line of Control (LOC) to join the Hizbul Mujahideen in 2000. India had won the Kargil war, and Gen Pervez Musharraf’s regime responded by stepping up the jihad in Kashmir to record levels. Attacks on Indian forces surged from 1,390 in 1999 to 1,994 in 2001, whiletheirfatalitiesshotupfrom387to577. The numbers of civilians killed climbed sharply, too, from 799 to 971.

Then came the India-pakistan military crisis of 2001-2002 — and Gen Musharraf’s regime backed down, cracking down on infiltrationacrosstheloc.sartajsheikhwasto spend the next nine years in a Hizb camp in Muzaffarabad, living on a dole as the jihad disintegrated.

Born in 1988 to Munawar Sheikh and Nageen Banu, the second of their four daughters and two sons, Sartaj Sheikh was part of the many unemployed, semi-educated men who emerged from Kashmir’s poorerneighbourhoodsthroughitsyearsof violence. The girls did well — Ruqiya Sheikh has completed a BED, while Saishta Sheikh is finishing her undergraduate education — while both boys struggled in school.

”Theboys used to get scolded a lot at home and ended up spending most of their timeonthestreets.therewerenorolemodels for them, except the mujahideen,” said a friend of the family.

In 2009, though, the increasingly frustrated Sartaj Sheikh asked his family to arrangeforhimtotravelbackfrompakistan, joining hundreds of other jihadists leaving their camps. The journey home through Kathmandu, family sources said, cost Munawarsheikhoverrs2.5lakh.sheikh,as part of a deal arranged through the SOG’S Anantnag unit, spent a year in prison, and was then released without having to face charges.

Sartaj Sheikh began working as a salesman at the Malik Cloth House at Anantnag’s Cheeni Chowk but, as the only member of his family in full-time employment, found it hard to make ends meet.

In 2012, as a number of young people again began to join the Hizbul Mujahideen in response to Burhan Wani’s online propaganda, the SOG had an offer for the jihadist-turned-salesman. He was to begin working for the Hizb again — this time, as an undercover agent for the police’s counter-terrorism effort. where he was posted — almost on a whim, family members said.

The following months, though, saw his new friends hunted down and killed. Adil Khandey and Farooq Sheikh, among the men Tariq Pandit first met, died within weeks. Naseer Pandit and Waseem Malla were shot dead in September 2015, followed in quick time by Aafaqullah Bhat and Bilal Bhat this April.

Ineachcase,thehizb’sinternalenquiries suggested the men had been betrayed — often by informers working for the SOG. The Hizb’s clumsy counter-intelligence efforts, however,rarelysucceededinstaunchingthe flow of information to police.

At Naseer Pandit’s funeral, a member of Tariq Pandit’s immediate family told The Indian Express, he became enraged as mourners came in. “Tariq was screaming, saying, ‘You people come here to mourn, and shout slogans for azadi (freedom), and then you go away and sell us’,” said the family member.

For police, Tariq Pandit’s arrest was a windfall. His detailed knowledge of Burhan Wani’s network of safehouses finally forced the Hizb commander to leave Tral. In one case, it transpired, Burhan Wani had been sittinginahideoutbuiltinsideahigh-school attic, while J&K Education Minister Naeem Akhtar lectured students below.

Then, on June 8, 2016, police and the 42 Rashtriya Rifles cordoned off a school in Lurgam were Burhan Wani was hiding. The Hizbcommandermanagedtoshoothisway out, using civilians leaving the building as cover — but would never return to Tral.

PDP leader Muzaffar Beigh has said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was not informed of the July 8 raid on Bamdoora, in an effort to distance her from its outcomes. However, highly placed police sources said she was informed, in writing, of the June 8 raid as well as an operation targetting Burhan Wani in March.

Four weeks after he escaped Tral, cellphone records now being analysed by the J&K Police show that Burhan Wani made his last call, using one of over 500 SIM cards he circulated over the last six months throughthephonerecoveredfromhisbody.

The call, records show, was made just a few hours before Sartaj Sheikh came out of his uncle’s home firing, perhaps hoping to cover the escape of the man he’d once helped hunt. Burhan Wani and his relatively unknown associate, Pervaiz Ahmad, tried leaving through the back, police say, and were gunned down.

Late the next night, a small group of armed men visited Shabir Ahmad Pandit and Manzoor Ahmad Pandit, cousins of Tariq Pandit, at their home in Karimabad. They were shot through the legs, a single bullet each, fired at point-blank range — the Hizb’s traditional punishment for police informers in cases where their actions caused significant harm to the group.

Theshootingspassedalmostunnoticed: by then, a wave of violence no one had expected or foreseen had been unleashed across Kashmir.

TOMORROW:

How Bamdoora gunbattle triggered violence in the streets