Pulwama Attack Accused Dies of Cardiac Arrest in Jammu Hospital

Srinagar: Bilal Ahmed Kuchay, a resident of Hajbal village of Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, arrested by the police in connection with the deadly ‘Pulwama attack’ in which, at least, 40 CRPF personnel were killed and eight others injured in February 2019 died in a Jammu hospital following a massive cardiac arrest overnight, the officials said on Tuesday.

They said that Kuchay had been shifted to Jammu’s Government Medical College Hospital from a jail in eastern Kishtwar district on September 17 for receiving specialised treatment. He was lodged in the Kishtwar district jail from July 5, 2020, they said.

On February 14, 2019, a suicide bomber Adil Ahmed Dar alias ‘Waqas Commando’, an alleged Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) cadre, rammed a Maruti (Suzuki) Eeco laden with, at least, sixty kilograms of deadly RDX into a CRPF bus after driving it parallel to a fully occupied vehicle which was part of a large CRPF convoy at Lethapora in Pulwama district, killing and maiming security personnel on board.

The explosives blew up in a 150-metre radius and the CRPF bus was blasted open and reduced to ribbons of charred metal and the human remains scattered across a 100-metre stretch of the road.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had its charge-sheet filed in a special court in Jammu on August 25, 2020 in the case named JeM chief Moulana Masood Azhar, his two brothers Rouf Asgar and Ammar Alvi, Dar and fifteen others as the accused. The NIA had claimed that the conspiracy to launch the deadly attack was hatched by the JeM leadership in Pakistan but carried out by local militant Dar to project it as an act of home-grown militancy in the Valley.

The terror attack was initially probed by the J&K police in close partnership with the CRPF, the Army and other security forces and intelligence agencies. However, the case was soon handed over to the NIA for investigation by the Union Home Ministry.

Kuchay and three others Shakir Bashir, Insha Jan and Peer Tariq were accused of harbouring and providing all logistics to the JeM militants including accommodating them in their houses.

The charge-sheet had been filed after the case was registered against the accused under various sections of J&K’s (now defunct) Ranbir Penal Code, Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Foreigners Act and J&K Public Property (Prevention of Damages) Act.

The J&K police and NIA say that while six terrorists, including three Pakistanis, involved in the terror attack were killed in separate encounters, six more, including JeM founder Masood Azhar are still at large.