J&K encounter: LeT commander Bashir was involved in killing of six policemen
The police said that all the 17 civilians who were trapped in a cluster of residential houses in the area were rescued.
Srinagar: Top Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) commander Bashir Lashkari and another militant Azad Ahmed Malik were killed on Saturday in a fire fight with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Anantnag district.
The police said that all the 17 civilians who were trapped in a cluster of residential houses in the area were “rescued”. These civilians included a family in whose house the militants took up positions. The officials alleged that the civilians were being used as ‘human shields’ by the holed up militants.
Bashir Ahmed Wani alias Bashir Lashkari, allegedly involved in the killing of six policemen in the district’s Acchabal area on June 16, was among the two gunmen trapped in a two-storey house at Brenti. Earlier reports had put the number of militants present in the house at four.
The security forces including Army, the J&K Police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group and the CRPF laid siege to the village after receiving information about the presence of Lashkari and his accomplices, the police sources said.
The security forces had tightened the noose around Lashkari after the killing of six policemen including station house officer Feroz Ahmed Dar in an ambush at Tajwah, Acchabal. He carried a bounty of '1 million on his head.
The deadly attack at a police vehicle in which the policemen were travelling through the area on the evening of June 16 had come hours after the security forces had eliminated the LeT’s district commander Junaid Matto along with another militant in a fire fight in neighbouring Arwani area.
The security forces officials had termed the killing of policemen a “revenge act” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice soon.
As per the police records, Bashir Lashkari who was known in the LeT as ‘Abu Akasha’ (father of spider) had crossed over to Pakistan for receiving arms training in 1999. He got stuck in PoK and could return only in 2012 after seizing ‘Surrender and Rehabilitation’ policy of the J&K government.
He was released in 2014 but was recycled into militancy in October 2015.
He soon became the district (Anantnag) commander of the LeT and then its divisional commander. “Besides the June 16 attack on the policemen, he was involved in a number of incidents,” said the police terming his killing “a major success”.