RAMBAN: In a major development, the Jammu and Kashmir police has arrested an Al Qaeda operative in Ramban, and has recovered a grenade from his possession. The operative identified as Amiruddin Khan is a native of West Bengal, and is believed to be the first non-local terrorist of the outfit arrested or killed in Kashmir.
“The police apprehended one Al Qaeda operative namely Amiruddin Khan S/o Mostafa Khan of West Bengal,” said an official spokesperson, adding that one Chinese grenade was also recovered from him.
“A case FIR No. 376/2022 u/s 7/25 Indian Arms Act, Sec 4 Explosive Act and 13, 20 UAPA has been registered and further investigation was going on,” the statement added.
The arrest comes two months after two terrorists of Ansar Ghazwatul Hind, an al-Qaeda affiliate, were killed by security forces in an encounter in Anantnag district.
The duo, identified as Fayaz Kumar and Owais Khan, were involved in several attacks on policemen, were killed in an operation in Thajiwara, Bijbehara area of Anantnag, in the month of September this year.
Earlier in May this year, a UN report has said that the Al-Qaeda was refocussing from Afghanistan to Kashmir, as suggested by the renaming of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) magazine.
“The 2020 name change of the AQIS magazine from ‘Nawa-i Afghan Jihad’ to ‘Nawa-e-Gazwah-e-Hind’ suggests a refocusing of AQIS from Afghanistan to Kashmir. The magazine reminded its readers that al-Zawahiri had called for ‘jihad’ in Kashmir following the Da’esh Sri Lanka attacks of April 2019,” the 13th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2611 (2021) had said in May 2022.
It was around the same time that the global terror group released another video message on Kashmir, calling the abrogation of Article 370 a slap on the face of Muslims.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police chief Dilbagh Singh has recently said that the graph of militancy was coming down in Valley, but there is a rise in the number of foreign terrorists killed by security forces this year.
As many as 40 foreign terrorists were killed in various encounters with the security forces in the Valley in 10 months of 2022, compared to 19 such killings in the entire 2021.
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