May 24
Zakir, 25, who hailed from the Noorpora area of South Kashmir’s Tral and was a close associate of popular Militant commander, Burhan wani had joined Militancy in 2013. Musa, a Btech student at Chandigarh who joined the militant group Hizbul Mujahideen parted ways from it in July 2017, the Global Islamic Media Front claimed that Zakir Musa had been named the head of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a newly created cell of Al-Qaeda.
Zakir Musa hailed from a well-to-do family and was good in academics. He really liked his iPhones and iPods, loved riding his Yamaha R15 fast and dressed in the latest fashion.
The 25 year old student who gained prominence in Kashmir as his slogans reverberated on Kashmir streets, in funerals, in graffiti, in protests, on Airports and even in exam halls lost six militants associated him during an encounter in last December at Tral in South Kashmir, In this encounter, his deputy Saliha Mohammed Akhoon alias Rehan Khan was also killed.
Sources said that the killing of Soliha handicapped Zakir Musa, who was now being seen by many as a new face of Kashmir’s indigenous armed struggle, he had started the AGH group with a total of 13 associates, many of whom were killed during encounters with Government Forces, mostly in South Kashmir.
At the funeral of his Six associates in last December, three youngsters from the same area went missing, who police suspect could have joined Musa. But the cops later said that two of them came back and only one is missing. Last year around 191 locals have joined militant ranks.
Once always in Public gaze, the death of his deputy, Rehan Khan, who was in command of all the operations and recruitment, as per Police, is the key reason to Zakir’s disappearance from the public domain. The last time his audio appeared on Social media was around August last year when he disassociated himself from the global Islamist outfit, ISIS.
“I have nothing to do with Daesh (ISIS) or Abu Baqr Al Baghdadi, i fight for Allah and i do not have have anyone’s support,” Musa had said. In this audio clip released in in August 2018, the civil engineer turned Militant, cleared the air and described himself as treading the path of Mir Syed Ali Hamdani, the famous Sufi saint from modern day Iran credited with popularizing Islam in Kashmir valley in the 14th century.
The last time Musa was seen was in Punjab as per Intel agencies, however Local Police believes that it is unlikely that Musa was in Punjab, however his role in Punjab bombings has been confirmed by Police as well.
Posters of Musa had earlier been put up in the frontier districts of Gurdaspur and Amritsar in November following similar reports that he could be hiding in Punjab.
“We found nothing specific on his locations or his movements for more than a year, he did not meet anyone, traveled alone, he did not trust even his once closest OGWs,” a police officer requesting anonymity said.
It gets tough for a Militants hide for a long, but Musa’s life as a Militant, and his organization AGH has been able to go into hiding for a long, “It is not that we were not trying to trace him, but we found nothing about him for a long time.”
Zakir Musa pertinently was trapped alone and he is one of the very few Local Militants who engaged the Government Forces for more than nine hours.
“Yesterday, the Local Police received about him hiding in the Dadasara area, the house was tightly cordoned, initially the forces thought they had killed him, but he survived for more than nine hours, which was surprising for all of us,” he told The Kashmiriyat.
After his disappearance in May last year, theories around the disappearance of Zakir Musa were doing rounds amid various sections of Kashmir including the journalist fraternity. Some “prominent citizens” also claimed that Musa had been hiding in a Police station while other ridiculed him saying that he was eating food in an STF or Army camp. (The Kashmiriyat)