Top
Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorist
Altaf Kachroo, who has been billed as the successor of
Burhan Wani, has been caught on tape brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle and running inside a residential area in
Kulgam in Kashmir. This is the first public appearance of Kachroo, who has been engineering attacks on security forces since 2015.
In the video accessed by TOI, locals are seen assisting him to escape after
CRPF had set up a cordon in a Kulgam village.
Kachroo was appointed as the new Kashmir operational chief and overall commander of HM following the elimination of his colleagues Sabzar Bhatt and Yasin Itoo in 2017.
The video, which was intercepted by the military intelligence a week ago, shows a woman sporting a red 'phiran' tapping his shoulder as he makes his way into a village.
Despite a shroud over their identities, both the J&K police and the
Indian Army have listed Kachroo and Qasim as A++ militants. Their names figure in the list of Top-12 militants released by the army during the last state multi-agency coordination (SMAC) meeting. "Kachroo himself is supplying weapons to civilians. We want him alive to break the weapon distribution network from Pakistan to young men in South Kashmir," said a top Jammu & Kashmir police officer.
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