Dec 13 brain: BSF says it’s got the body

Sources in New Delhi say that Baba had come to Srinagar shortly before Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit this week planning to carry out a ‘‘fidayeen attack’’ when the country’s senior political leaders had converged there for the CMs’ conference.

If the BSF’s claims turn out to be valid—Minister of State for Home I D Swami said tonight that the body will be identified by the co-accused in the Parliament attack case—Baba’s death is a severe setback to the jehadis in the Valley. For, sources said, he was also one of the prime ‘‘motivators’’ for suicide attacks.

So elusive and mysterious was Baba—he was the father of two children including a three-month-old son—that except for his core jehadi circle, those who have met him say they are not sure whether the person they met was actually Baba. Or a decoy as part of his strategy.

That’s why when Inspector General, BSF, Vijay Raman today claimed that Gazi Baba had been killed—everyone, from reporters to security agencies, was asking questions.

From information that The Sunday Express has pieced over the years, Baba was around 42 years old and his original name was Shahbaz Khan. He was a resident of Bahawalpur in Pakistan, incidentally also the native place of his Boss, Jaish-e-Mohammad’s founder Maulana Masood Azhar.

Baba’s tale of terror in the Valley begins when he sneaked into Kashmir way back in 1997. According to security agencies, he served a stint as a mujhideen in Afghanistan but left when the Russians withdrew. In the Valley, he was part of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the first jehadi outfit that introduced foreign militants in Kashmir in 1994 by inducting scores of Afghan veterans and thus raising the pitch of violence.

Baba soon became one of the top 10 commanders of the Harkat and was made chief of its operations in the Ganderbal-Safapora area—an important transit route for militants sneaking into Srinagar from both north and south Kashmir.

Meanwhile, Masood Azhar, who was the general secretary of Jamiat-e-Ulemai Pakistan, Harkat’s parent organisation, had been in jail after he was arrested from Anantnag in 1994. When Azhar was released in December, 1999 during the Kandahar hijacking in exchange for the crew and passengers, he decided to snap ties with the Harkat and launch a new group, the Jaish-e-Mohammad. And Azhar’s first move was to get Baba to switch over.

This led to a large number of Harkat commanders and operatives to join Jaish. Security agencies believe it was Baba who masterminded the car bombing at Army’s 15 Corps headquarters in Srinagar in May 2000, to formally launch Jaish operations.

This was the first of its kind where militants had used a suicide bomber following the pattern of Palestinian terrorists, thus forcing the security establishment to rethink its strategy.

Baba kept changing his codes with every operation. For example, he became Irfan Bhai after Parliament attack and recently was code named ‘‘Green Zero’’ in Jaish circles. Just over two years ago, Baba married a local girl Zamrooda in Safapora and has two children—an elder daughter and a son who is just three months old. The security agencies kept a close watch on his wife but Baba still proved elusive.

Until hours before dawn today, acting on a tip-off, a large BSF contingent surrounded a house at Safakadal and fought a fierce battle with militants holed up inside. When the guns fell silent, the BSF recovered the bodies of two militants, one was identified as Gazi Baba.

A BSF constable was killed while two deputy commandants and an assistant commandant were among the six injured in the fighting.

The prize catch was immediately carried to the nearby Karan Nagar BSF camp, where Inspector General, Kashmir Frontiers, Vijay Raman told reporters he was certain that the body lying there was that of Gazi Baba.

‘‘What was believed to be mission impossible, the BSF has made it possible today. We have killed Gazi Baba. This in our mind is a great feather in the cap of BSF,’’ he said. ‘‘We are proud to get one of their (militants) brains —a person who used to direct the operations’’. He said this operation was not a coincidence but part of a proper plan. ‘‘We have been after him for the last two months. We were constantly tracking him,’’ he said.

The BSF promptly ringed the house, owned by one Mohammad Shafi Dar. ‘‘We took some initial casualties because we had expected the militants to be sleeping. But when our first party raided the house, they encountered stiff resistance,’’ Raman said.

A jubilant BSF Director General Ajai Raj Sharma said killing of Gazi Baba was a cause of great satisfaction to him, specially since the attack on Parliament had happened when he was heading the Delhi Police. ‘‘Then I was the Commissioner of Delhi Police and now I am heading the BSF, the force which killed him,’’ he said.

Though Baba was one of the two militants to be killed in the initial phase of the encounter, his identity was established only around 3.30 pm today after officials from the Intelligence Bureau confirmed it was indeed his body. The news was instantly conveyed to Advani. Later militant communication intercepts were picked up which said that ‘‘teen nau (3-9) mara gaya.’’ This was Baba’s code name. Intercepts also referred to ‘‘Alpha Sierra’’ — the second militant codenamed AS — being killed.