Shakir Hussein, alias Chota Hafiz, an accused in the September 7, 2011 Delhi high court blast case, has been killed in a brief encounter with security forces in high altitude Navapachi area of Jammu and Kashmir’s eastern district of Kishtwar, officials said on Thursday. Fifteen people had died in the blast.
“The details of the encounter are still emerging,” said a police official here. Another senior police official IGP (Jammu range) Dilbagh Singh confirmed the killing of “one of the most wanted militants” in the encounter that took place at Qadrana in Navapachi area. While terming it as a major breakthrough, he told reporters in Jammu that Jammu and Kashmir police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) together with Army troops mounted an operation in the area on Thursday evening following a tip off. The police official added that on seeing the security forces zeroing on him, the militant commander opened fire which was retaliated killing him a brief encounter “which did not last for more than five minutes.”
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had put a reward of `1 million on him and asked the Jammu and Kashmir police and various Central security forces on counter-insurgency assignment in Jammu and Kashmir to tighten noose around him after his wife gave birth to a baby at their residence at Palmar in Kishtwar district recently. Initially, the security agencies were baffled and were trying to find out if the militant against whom a purported manhunt was launched soon after the investigations into the deadly blast had confirmed his involvement had visited his wife at their ancestral house or she visited him in the Kashmir Valley where he was believed to had shifted his base.
However, they soon learnt that the 26-year-old militant was actually hiding in the hills of his home district Kishtwar only following which the effort to get him dead or alive was intensified.