Spurned lover’s tip-off helped track, kill top Jaish terrorist Khalid

NEW DELHI: The tip-off that led to the killing of top Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist Khalid+ in an encounter with the forces in the Baramulla district of north Kashmir on Monday came from a local Kashmiri woman he was allegedly having an affair with.

A top intelligence officer told TOI that Khalid alias Shahid Showkat, who led Jaish operations in north Kashmir, had lately been commanding a group of 3-4 Jaish fidayeen and supposedly on a mission to carry out a "spectacular" suicide attack at a security installation in Kashmir.

However, a tip-off from a local Kashmiri woman led the J&K police to track him down and kill him before the fidayeen mission could be executed. Just like slain Lashker-e-Taiba terrorist Abu Dujana, Khalid was allegedly involved in multiple relationships with local Kashmiri women.

One of his partners, on discovering that his interest had shifted to a new woman, decided to get back by helping police track him with the help of messages they had been sharing via a social media app, sources said. Khalid was supposedly due to meet the woman on Monday.

However, he ran into a naka that police had carefully laid out for him. He fired at the troops at the naka, leading to an encounter that ended in his killing.

As reported by TOI earlier, after Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashker-e-Taiba suffered major reverses in the past months with the loss of some top terrorists, Pakistan-based masterminds deployed Jaish fidayeen in the valley to carry out big fidayeen attacks targeted at Army/para-military camps or police lines.

As many as 167 terrorists have been killed by the security forces in J&K so far this year, including Khalid and three others neutralised in Shopian in separate encounters on Monday, surpassing the figure of 150 terrorists killed in whole of last year. In fact, an average of one terrorist has been killed per day since May 2017, courtesy the collaboration and coordination among the J&K police, Army, central para-military forces and intelligence agencies.

Only last week, 3 terrorists from a group of Jaish fidayeen who infiltrated into J&K two months back and struck at a BSF camp near the Srinagar airport, were successfully neutralised.