Introduction: Major setback to Lashkar-e-Toiba
In the gunbattle that occurred during the night intervening Friday and Saturday at Harmain village in Shopian, security forces have achieved what they are still unaware of: South Kashmir’s most wanted Lashkar-e-Toiba commanders, Abu Zubair and Abu Ma’az, are both among the six militants killed. While as Abu Zubair had since been identified as the main planner of a suicidal strike on Akshardham temple of Gujarat, Abu Ma’az had surfaced as the main architect and executor of the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits at Nadimarg village of Shopian in March this year.
Through well-placed sources in south Kashmir, EXCELSIOR today learned that Abu Zubair of Gujranwala, Pakistan, as well as Abu Ma’az of Pakistan- administered Kashmir, have died alongwith four other commanders of Lashkar- e-Toiba in the Saturday night gunbattle at Harmain in Shopian area. As already reported, six militants had died in the encounter. The operation was conducted by troops of 10 Para who were later on joined by a reinforcement of Rashtriya Rifles 01 Bn.
Even after the militants killed a former militant of Al-Jehad, namely Fayaz Ahmed Wani of Harmain on Friday evening, they joined an important meeting of the commanders in the same village. Somebody passed on the information to the nearby camp of 10 Para. Within hours troops swooped on the hideout and killed six militants—all of them believed to be commanders—in a fierce gunbattle. Initial reports said that a meeting of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen commanders was in progress when troops conducted the raid. Even a Harkat-ul-Mujahideen spokesman had confirmed to a local news agency in Srinagar over telephone that Harkat’s "district commander" Mufti Arshid and Jaish-e-Mohammad’s "district commander" Dr Mustafa had died in the armed clash at Harmain.
One militant had reportedly managed to escape in injured condition. Three soldiers of 10 Para had sustained injuries in the gunbattle.
However, this newspaper today received credible inputs according to which some or all of the commanders killed at Harmain belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba. Lashkar-e-Toiba sources identified the six slain militants as Abu Zubair Faisal of Gujranwala, Abu Ma’az of ‘Azad Kashmir’, Abu Furqan of Lahore, Abu Noman of Sargodha, Abu Zarr of ‘Azad Kashmir’ and a local Kashmiri militant of Qazigund, codenamed as Abu Hanzala.
Officials have been describing Abu Zubair as Lashkar’s "divisional commander" and Abu Ma’az as a "district commander" of the organisation. However, all the senior officials in Police and security forces maintained till late this evening that identities of the six militants killed in Shopian had not been ascertained yet. It appeared that they had no knowledge of the fact that two of the most wanted Lashkar militants had been killed on Saturday.
Almost all the militants and conduits of Lashkar-e-Toiba, arrested in south Kashmir in the last several months, have identified Abu Zubair as the main architect and planner of the suicidal strike on Akshardham temple in which two Pakistani fidayeen had killed over two dozen Hindus and left about 50 more wounded at the temple near Ahmedabad on September 24, 2002. Chand Khan, a militant operative of Bareilly, had revealed to his Police interrogators last month that it was Abu Zubair who had assigned the Gujarat task to two Pakistani militants.
Chand Khan had explained how Abu Zubair had paid an amount of Rs 35,000 to him and the two fidayeen and asked them to strike on the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Ahmedabad. When, according to Chand Khan, the trio reached Ahmedabad and learned that Modi’s rally had ended, they decided to strike on the most revered place of Hindu worship—Akshardham. It was during the course of this interrogation that Chand Khan mentioned the senior PDP leader and the state Agriculture Minister Abdul Aziz Zargar’s house at Manzgam as Abu Zubair’s hideout. According to his sensational revelations, all of his meetings with Abu Zubair, before and after the Akshardham, had happened at Zargar’s house.
Chand Khan has been flown to Ahmedabad by a Gujarat Police team and he is currently under interrogation with the Crime Branch there.
Some of the arrested Lashkar militants
had also identified Abu Ma’az as the planner and executor of the massacre
of 24 Kashmiri Pandits at Nadimarg village in Shopian on March 24, 2003.
They included Manzoor Zahid Chowdhary of Pakistan, who had been arrested
in Bagh-e-Mehtab locality from a retired Police officer’s residence on
July 29th and later shot dead in Chadoura area on August 7th. According
to sources, Chowdhary had revealed that the massacre at Nadimarg was Abu
Ma’az’s "individual decision", which had not been cleared by the Lashkar
headquarters.