Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed to have achieved a major breakthrough by killing Jaish-e-Mohammad’s (JeM) India operational in-charge, who had masterminded the 2005 attack on the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, in a gunbattle in the heart of Jammu city on Saturday.In a joint operation carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Delhi Police, Saifulah Qari was killed and his associate arrested.Acting on intelligence reports that three JeM militants including Qari were planning to disrupt Independence Day celebrations and were putting up in a house in the Janipur area of the city, the joint team cordoned off the house on Saturday morning. On seeing the police, the militants started firing and in retaliatory fire, which lasted for over three hours, Qari, a Pakistani militant, was killed and his associate Zaffar Iqbal, of Tradkhan area of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), was injured. Delhi Police sub-inspector Devinder Singh was also injured in the incident.Inspector General of Police Jammu S P Vaid said Qari was one of the most active militants in Jammu and Kashmir and his killing was a major success. “Qari was the in-charge operations of JeM in the country and was monitoring its activities across India,” Vaid said. In the Valley, Qari mostly operated from militancy-hit Mendhar area of Poonch district. A month ago he and other militants travelled from Rajouri to Jammu in a bus and rented a house in Janipur. Police have rounded up the wife of the house owner and three others, including a college girl at Jammu and a Government employee at Mendhar in this connection.Before joining JeM, Qari was the deputy operational commander of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and was considered the right hand of its federally administered tribal area (Pakistan) -based chief Abu Khalil, who had formed the outfit after breaking away from Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami. IG Vaid said the police recovered one Chinese-made pistol, two grenades, one satellite phone, seven mobile phones, four SIM cards, three matrix sheets and Rs 30,000 in cash. A voter identity card was also recovered from Qari. In the card he was shown as Mohd Raqeeb of Gursai Mendhar. Police said Qari was responsible for recruiting youths and leading them into militancy. The finances to the outfit were routed through him and he had been active in the Jammu division for the last six years.Police said security was beefed up further in Jammu.
