A video recorded by 16-year-old local ''fidayeen'' (suicide attacker) Fardeen Ahmad Khanday before last Sunday’s pre-dawn attack on the headquarters of the CRPF’s 185 Battalion in Pulwama’s Lethipora has emerged on social media. The attack left five jawans and three militants dead.
In the eight-minute video, Khanday, a resident of Tral and son of a serving policeman, asks youth to wage ''jihad.' against India. “By the time this video reaches you I would be a guest in heaven,” he says.
Khanday, affiliated to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) carried out the attack along with another local militant, Manzoor Ahmad Baba of Pulwama’s Drubgam.
Missing from home for 3 months
He was missing from home for the past three months and the police said they had no clue he had “turned into something this dangerous.”
In May 2000, Afaq Ahmad Shah, a Class 12 student of Srinagar, became the first local ''fidayeen'' to mount an attack. He blew up a stolen Maruti car to attack the 15 Corps headquarters in Srinagar’s Badamibagh Cantonment.
“Since then a negligible number of local youth offered to be 'fidayeen'. In fact, it’s Jaish, unlike the Hizb-ul Mujahideen, that swears by 'fidayeen' attacks. Now, recruiting the locals for it is a dangerous trend,” according to a senior counter-insurgency cell official in Srinagar.
'Aimed at scuttling surrender policy'
The official said the move was aimed at “scuttling the surrender policy offered to local youth during the encounters”, which was yielding results in the past few months. “Around 74 youths were counselled and taken out of the grip of terrorism in 2017. Seven youths laid down arms and came back to join their families,” said Director General of Police, J&K, S.P. Vaid.
Khanday’s video, shot with weapons and ammunition around him, mocked the government for “believing that unemployment was driving Kashmiri youth to militancy.”
“Jihad is farz [mandatory] for a Muslim. Its importance increases when infidels occupy our land and threaten the modesty of our women. I have listened to the call of Koran and plunged into the battlefield. This will continue till the last occupying soldier is present in Kashmir,” says Khanday in Urdu.
The technique, the police said, was the same “as employed in volatile Iraq and Syria to attract more and more youth into militancy”.
Khanday accuses New Delhi of “looting the natural resources of J&K.” He also invokes the Babri Masjid demolition to “call upon Muslims in India to join jihad.”
Pro-Zakir Musa slogans raised at funeral
Hundreds attended Khanday’s funeral in Tral on Monday, where youth raised pro-freedom and pro-Zakir Musa slogans.
Musa heads a pro-Al-Qaeda outfit in Kashmir. Several speakers at the funeral made appeals to people to boycott the panchayat elections slated for February. One youth was severely injured during clashes in Pulwama. Train and Internet services were stopped in Pulwama “as a security measure.”
