SRINAGAR: J&K police intensified their sweeping operation to dismantle terrorist support networks and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), searching over 200 locations in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district and questioning more than 500 people, including a doctor, as the crackdown entered its fifth day Tuesday.
The campaign across Kashmir valley has gathered pace after the unearthing of a “white-collar” terrorist network involving Kashmir-born doctors in Haryana’s Faridabad and UP, suspected to be linked to the November 10 car blast in New Delhi. In total, police have summoned over 1,500 people for questioning in recent days.
Among those questioned was Dr Malik Tajamul-ul-Islam of Kulgam. His father said Malik, an MBBS graduate from Govt Medical College in Srinagar and preparing for his MD entrance exams, was called to a Srinagar police station.
“They took his phone and asked about our cold storage facility in Kulgam and its finances,” the father told reporters. “He was released later, and I received him outside the station. He was only questioned about the cold storage.”
A senior officer said the latest phase in Kulgam began early Wednesday, targeting JeI-linked members and their associates as part of efforts to “dismantle the terrorist ecosystem at the grassroots”. Searches covered homes of “over ground workers” and people whose relatives had migrated to Pakistan or PoK and allegedly joined outfits there.
“About 500 people were interrogated. Many were bound down and shifted to Anantnag jail under preventive laws,” the officer said.
Parallel searches in north Kashmir’s Sopore and south Kashmir’s Awantipora focused on JeI-linked people. Police reported seizing digital devices and “incriminating material” during these operations, while “several JeI members were questioned and detained under law”.
In a related move, authorities ordered the attachment of the Srinagar home of lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom, former president of J&K High Court Bar Association, in a 2009 case concerning an event marking Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s death anniversary. Police said Qayoom and others, including Asiya Andrabi and Shabir Ahmad Najar, made anti-India speeches and raised separatist slogans at the seminar in a Srinagar hotel.
Police said witness statements established that the seminar’s participants had “provoked the audience, made inflammatory remarks, and advocated the secession of J&K”.
Qayoom is currently jailed in the 2020 murder conspiracy case of lawyer Babar Qadri. He allegedly used his two-storey house and adjoining land at Bulbul Bagh in Barzulla to “conceal incriminating material and aid unlawful activities”, police said.
A search of the property, conducted on a magistrate’s warrant, allegedly led to the confiscation of banned literature, a Hizbul Mujahideen letterhead with seal impression, a press note, a letter addressed by Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin to then US President Bill Clinton, and another Hizbul seal in Urdu.
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