One of the most wanted terrorists and commanders of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Ishfaq Dar was among two terrorists killed in an encounter with security forces on Monday in south Kashmir’s Shopian district.
He was involved in the killing of four policemen deployed for security in a residential area of the minority Kashmiri Pandit community at Zainapora in 2018 and also two truck drivers from Punjab in 2019 when they were engaged in loading fruits of Kashmiri orchardists in Shopian.
The IGP (Kashmir) Vijay Kumar has described their killing as a major success of the security forces.
Giving details of the encounter, police said Dar was an active terrorist since 2017 and was on the list of most-wanted terrorists.
Acting on a piece of specific information generated by Shopian Police about the presence of terrorists at the village Check-i-Sidique Khan area of Shopian, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by Police, 34RR of the Army and 178 Battalion CRPF.
During the search operation as the presence of terrorists got ascertained they were given repeated opportunities to surrender, however, they fired indiscriminately upon the joint search party which was retaliated leading to an encounter.
In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists of proscribed terror outfit LeT were killed and their bodies were retrieved from the site of the encounter. They have been identified as Ishfaq Ahmad Dar and Majid Iqbal Bhat. Both belonged to Shopian.
As per police records, both the killed terrorists were part of groups involved in several terror crimes and were instrumental in planning and executing terror attacks on security establishments, civilian killings and motivating youth to join terrorist folds.
Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition including 2 AK-47 rifles and 8 Magazines were recovered from the site of the encounter.