Abdul Qayoom Najar: Valley’s most wanted militant caught on camera for 1st time
The video footage, police sources said, suggested that Najar was personally involved in the attack on a telecommunication company’s showroom in Srinagar.
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The militant (in blue shirt) was caught on camera outside a telecom operator’s showroom in Srinagar. (Source: Express photo)
For more than two decades, expelled Hizbul Mujahideen commander and one of the most wanted militants in the Valley Abdul Qayoom Najar was a faceless militant who kept police on their toes.
But now, the J&K Police is believed to have got the first clues about his appearance. Najar was caught on camera, outside a telecom operator’s showroom, in Srinagar.
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The video footage, police sources said, suggested that Najar was personally involved in the attack on a telecommunication company’s showroom in Srinagar.
“We have his identity now. We also have the (CCTV) footage and we are verifying whether the person in the video is Qayoom Najar,” Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Srinagar, Amit Kumar told The Indian Express.
The CCTV footage, currently being examined by the police, showed a man wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt outside a telecom company’s showroom in Srinagar.
The cameras also captured a woman, standing close by and handing him something. In the footage, while the woman later stepped out of the CCTV’s range, the man moved to the showroom’s door. Police sources claimed they were sure that the man caught on camera was Najar (41).
The militant commander, who founded Lashkar-e-Islam — a new militant outfit that claimed attacks on the telecom service operators in Sopore and the killing of civilians in the area — so far had a perfect cover. With no picture of Najar available with the security agencies, he operated with impunity.
Sources said that till now the security agencies only relied on a “descriptive image of Najar” — a morphed image of Najar’s brother.
“We had developed that image from his brother’s image. We were told that he looked like his brother, but was bald. Based on those inputs, we made that picture,” a senior police officer said.
In May, the J&K Police cut a sorry figure after they released posters seeking details about Najar which, as it turned out later, carried pictures of a shopkeeper from Kupwara claiming that he was the dreaded militant.
A top Hizbul Mujahideen commander, who worked as the de-facto operations commander of the outfit in Valley, Najar was expelled from the organisation by the Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin for his “role in civilian killings” and “attacks on the telecom services in north Kashmir”.
On Saturday, Najar’s deputy Tariq Ahmad Mir’s body was fished out from a stream in Sumbal.
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