Doc module’s 1st link to J&K militancy emerges

The first link of the recently busted doctor terror module with militancy has been traced to Muzamil Ahmad Tantray, alias Hafiz, an operative of Al-Qaida affiliate Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind who was killed in a 2021 encounter in south Kashmir, investigators have found.

Around a dozen people, including three doctors, have been arrested since the Jammu and Kashmir Police unearthed the module and recovered a huge cache of explosives and arms from Haryana’s Faridabad. One of the module members, Dr Umer un-Nabi, also from the Valley, blew himself up in an explosive-laden car near Delhi’s Red Fort, killing 15 persons and injuring several others.

Sources told The Tribune that Srinagar cleric Maulvi Irfan Ahmad, hailing from south Kashmir’s Shopian and now in the NIA custody, had introduced Tantray to the module members.

The sources said Irfan and Tantray, who too belonged to Shopian district, studied together at a south Kashmir seminary. Irfan had met arrested doctor module member Muzamil Ahmad Ganaie —employed at the Al Falah University in Faridabad when the group was busted — at a Valley hospital when the latter was working there, the sources said.

Al-Qaida’s propaganda arm had named militant Zakir Musa, who was earlier associated with Hizbul Mujahideen, as the “Kashmir head” of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in 2018. Musa was killed in an encounter in 2019. In the coming months, the security forces eliminated the remaining little members of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind and around 2022, the group was completely wiped out from Kashmir.

The sources said the doctor module’s first ever “terror interaction” was with Tantray. Officials said it was being investigated whether the module members were in touch with anyone else from the terror outfit after Tantray was killed in an encounter in Shopian.

Security officials said though the module had pasted posters of Jaish-e-Mohammed at Srinagar’s Nogwam, which led to the unearthing of the case, the group members were mostly inclined towards Al-Qaida ideology and their focus was beyond Kashmir.

The J&K Police had last month registered a case after Jaish posters carrying threats to security personnel were found pasted in Srinagar’s Bunpora Nowgam. When the investigation started, the police established the role of Irfan, who was a cleric at a Nogwam mosque, which led the investigators to the doctor terror module.