A suicide bomber who killed 44 paramilitary policemen in Indian-occupied Kashmir joined a militant group after having been beaten by troops three years ago, his parents told Reuters on Friday.
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has reportedly claimed responsibility for Thursday’s car bomb attack on a security convoy, the worst in decades of the held territory.
It comes months before a key Indian general election.
Adil Ahmad Dar, 20, from the village of Lethipora in occupied Kashmir, rammed a car full of explosives into the convoy.
“We are in pain in the same way the families of the soldiers are,” said farmer Ghulam Hassan Dar, adding that his son had been radicalised after police stopped him and his friends on the way home from school in 2016.
International media’s coverage of Pulwama attack in occupied Kashmir
“They were stopped by the troops and beaten up and harassed,” Dar said, adding that the students were accused of stone-pelting. “Since then, he wanted to join the militants.”
His mother, Fahmeeda, corroborated her husband’s account. “He was beaten by Indian troops a few years back when he was returning from school,” she said. “This led to anger in him against Indian troops.”
Both the parents said they were unaware of their son’s plan to attack the convoy. Dar did not return home from his work as a labourer on March 19 last year, Fahmeeda added.
“We searched for him for three months,” she said. “Finally we gave up efforts to bring him back home.”
Dar said he blamed politicians for his son’s death.
“They should have resolved the issue through dialogue,” he said, referring to the Kashmir conflict. “It is they who are responsible for driving these youth into militancy. The sons of the common man die here, whether they are Indian troops or our sons.”
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Searching for answers
As Dar’s family searched for answers to how their son became the face of the deadliest militant attack in Kashmir, they remembered an incident in 2016. “One day, he was returning from his school and men from the STF stopped him and made him rub his nose on ground,” his father said. The Jammu and Kashmir police’s counterinsurgency unit was initially called the Special Task Force. Though its name has since been changed to Special Operations Group, in local parlance, it is still “STF”. The men forced the boy to make a circle around their jeep with his nose, his father said: “He kept mentioning this incident again and again.”
Dar’s uncle, Abdul Rashid Dar, pointed out that his nephew was very passionate about pro-freedom politics in Kashmir. “He participated actively in protests,” Abdul Rashid Dar said. “During the 2016 Burhan Wani uprising, he got hit by a bullet in the leg. It was in plaster for three months.” The killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8, 2016, had triggered mass protests that raged for months in the Valley.
Dar was not the first member of his family to join militancy. His cousin, Manzoor Rashid Dar, son of Abdul Rashid Dar, joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2016. He survived for only 11 days before being killed in a gunfight on June 30, 2016. “My other son, Tauseef Ahmad, also went to join militancy in March last year,” said Abdul Rashid Dar. “Four days after he went missing, Adil left home too. While my son returned after 14 days, Adil did not.”
https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/...en-the-teen-behind-kashmir-s-deadliest-attack
