Journalism of Courage
Till March last year, Adil Ahmad Dar (20), a resident of Gundibagh village in Pulwama district of South Kashmir, used to work in a sawmill. On Thursday, the Jaish-e-Mohammad named him as the suicide bomber behind the attack on the CRPF convoy.
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According to reports, Adil left his home on March 19, 2018, and didn’t return. His friend, Sameer Ahmad, a post-graduate student of Geology at Kashmir University, went missing the same day. Adil’s family filed a missing person report at the local police station. But their search ended a few days later, when his photograph was posted on social networking sites, holding an AK-47 and with the code name ‘Waqas Commando’.
In a pre-recorded video message released by the Jaish after the suicide attack on Thursday, Adil said he had joined its ‘fidayeen’ squad. This was just two months after a local militant, Fardeen Ahmad Khanday (16), was killed in an attack on a CRPF camp at Lethpora.
Adil, whose father, Ghulam Hassan Dar, is a small-time vendor, dropped out of Class XII and started to work at a sawmill owned by a neighbour. Till he left to join militancy last March.
“After leaving home, he met us only once,” Dar told The Indian Express. “His cousin was a militant, who was killed just 11 days after joining them,” he said.
According to his family, Adil was shot in the leg when he took part in the protests that rocked the Valley following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen ‘commander’ Burhan Wani in 2016.
“It is bad that people from both sides are being killed,” said Dar. “The politicians are playing politics and not addressing the problem. They should try to find out why the youth are picking up the gun and are ready to take such an extreme step,” he said.
In January last year, two local militants from Pulwama — Fardeen Ahmad Khanday and Manzoor Baba — were killed during an attack on a CRPF camp at Lethpora.
