One of the main perpetrators of the attack in Pahalgam, identified as Pakistani national Hashim Musa alias Suleiman, was active in Jammu and Kashmir for the last year and was likely involved in at least three attacks on security forces and non-locals, officials familiar with the probe said on Thursday.
Musa is believed to be hiding in the higher reaches of the Pir Panjal range, along with four other terrorists, who carried out at the attack on tourists at Baisaran meadow on Tuesday, the officials said.
These four terrorists were identified by the Jammu and Kashmir police as Ali Bhai alias Talha (Pakistani), Asif Fauji (Pakistani), Adil Hussain Thoker (a resident of Anantnag) and Ahsan (a resident of Pulwama). The police also released their sketches based on the details given by the survivors of the attack.
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It is suspected that Musa may be working with other Pakistan backed terror groups operating in the Valley other than the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
As part of the probe, security agencies are looking for common links including the overground workers of LeT, who, in past one year, facilitated the travel of Pakistani terrorists from near the border to various districts of Kashmir, said an officer, who didn’t wish to be named.
Separately, the officer said, investigators are scouring cyberspace to identify people in the Kashmir Valley who came in contact with the LeT and its proxy, The Resistance Front (TRF), using encrypted apps in its plans to target non-locals.
A second official said that some of these local residents and overground workers are already being questioned to know more about the attackers, particularly Musa.
The police have detained more than 2,000 people, mostly former militants and overground workers (OGWs). “Many people after the initial investigation have been released. More than 2000 people were picked up by security agencies,” an officer from the local police said. The police have also announced ₹20 lakh as reward for details of the terrorists.
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Police officials said that Thoker infiltrated to Pakistan in 2018 and returned to the Union territory last year. The two foreigners, they said, have been active in Kashmir from past two years.
Meanwhile, top ministry of home affairs (MHA), Intelligence Bureau and other central intelligence agencies officials met on Thursday in Delhi to discuss various steps to be taken to curb infiltration, heighten security at borders and track the support system of terror groups, according to officials cited above.
Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba’s proxy, the Resistance Front (TRF), has claimed responsibility for the attack, but officials said that it is run by LeT operatives only.
Since last year, NIA has stepped up its crackdown on outfits such as TRF, United Liberation Front Jammu & Kashmir (ULFJ&K), Mujahideen Gazwat-ul-Hind (MGH), Jammu & Kashmir Freedom Fighters (JKFF), Kashmir Tigers, PAAF and others. These outfits are affiliated to Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), Al-Badr, Al-Qaeda, etc.
A counter-terrorism official said these groups were trying to revive terrorism and disturb the peace and communal harmony of Kashmir for past couple of years.
A group of heavily armed terrorists emerged out of the woods at around 2pm on Tuesday and indiscriminately started firing at around 500 tourists who were present on the lush Baisaran grasslands near Pahalgam town in Kashmir. At least 26 people died – all men, 25 of them tourists, and 24 of them Hindus – in the attack that was reminiscent of the heydays of militancy in the 1990s and 2000s and the worst to rock Kashmir since the abrogation of the region’s special status in 2019.