PAKISTANI mercenaries operating in Jammu and Kashmir are tricking the youth into terrorism and using them as “terror mules” who can even be eliminated if they plan to shun the path of violence, senior security officials said on Sunday. Referring to an encounter in Budgam earlier this month and the call details of 24-year-old Wasim Qadir Mir, a resident of Shahzadpora, the officials said he was the latest victim of the despotic behaviour of the Pakistani terrorists who eliminated him during a gunfight with security forces in village Zoiu in the central Kashmir district on January 6. Mir along with his two Pakistani accomplices were trapped in a cordon-and-search operation, leading to a fierce gunfight, they said, adding by dawn, it was common news that the security forces had eliminated yet another group of terrorists in an encounter but what was uncommon was the way the series of events unfolded during the encounter the preceding night.

 

“During the encounter Mir wanted to put down his arms probably with an aim to come out and surrender to the security forces but was forced by the two Pakistani terrorists to keep firing back. “Details that emerged later including the post-mortem report further confirmed that Mir was actually killed by members of his own group, as a result of their failed attempts to resist him from surrendering,” a senior official involved in the gunfight said. Mir was a school dropout who initially worked as an Over Ground Worker and subsequently was recruited into the terror folds in December 2020 by JeM commander Saifulla alias “Lambu Bhai”, a Pakistani terrorist. Even though Mir’s stint as an active terrorist was short, he had a long list of acts of terror attributed to him, including the Zewan attack in which three police personnel were killed and 11 others were injured on December 13 last year, the officials said.

 

They said it was probably his involvement in a long list of terror-related incidents that prevented him from re-joining the mainstream and eventually when he was given an opportunity by the security forces to save his own life, he did not stand a chance at the hands of the very companions for whom he was working as the “terror mule”. He said as it would have exposed the façade of the so-called local freedom movement and also shown the great human tragedy that the valley has been subjected to for the last three decades by Pakistan-based terror groups.