DGP S.P. Vaid said while there was no IS presence as such in J&K, local militants got influenced by its ideology online.
Srinagar: Four militants killed in an encounter in Anantnag Friday were labeled members of the so-called ‘Islamic State of Jammu & Kashmir (ISJK)’, the first reference to a possible local affiliate of the West Asia-based terror group that has waged bloodbaths worldwide.
A member of the J&K police special operations group and a civilian were also killed in the encounter at Khiram Srigufara.
The ISJK reference was made by J&K director general of police S.P. Vaid.
“The militants have been influenced by the ideology of the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). The presence of ISIS is not there as such… but these militants get influenced by ISIS online,” Vaid told ThePrint.
Police credits the internet as the source of the Islamic State (IS) terror group’s influence in J&K, where militancy is reportedly making its presence felt again amid a seemingly deepening sense of alienation among local youth.
In January this year, MoS Home Hansraj Ahir had told the Rajya sabha that “nothing has been established on ground that ISIS is operating in part of Kashmir valley”.
Not first instance of influence
However, though this is the first reference to the ISJK as an entity, local militants have reportedly taken inspiration from the IS before.
“Those driven by the IS ideology include Eisa Fazili and Mughees Ahmed Mir, the two militants killed separately by the security forces,” Vaid added.
Fazili, a BTech student at Rajouri’s Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University, was killed in March this year in Anantnag, while Mir died in Srinagar in November last year. At the latter’s funeral, the use of the IS’ black-and-white flag to wrap the body had stoked fears of the terror group’s emergence in the Valley, fears the authorities had dismissed at the time.
A file photograph of Fazili, viral on Facebook, showed him wearing a T-shirt with the IS symbol and standing near a banner of the outfit, which is also known by its Arabic language acronym Daesh and seeks to carve out an Islamic caliphate. Fazili and the two suspected militants killed with him were named by the IS as Abu Zarr al-Hindi, Abu Barra al-Kashmiri and Eisa Ruhollah Khatab al-Kashmiri.