Pahalgam Terror Attack: Who is Mushtaq Zargar at Whom a Finger of Suspicion is Being Raised?

According to these reports, the finger of suspicion has been raised at Zargar who lives in Pakistan during a probe into the April 22 deadly attack in Baisaran meadow of Pahalgam that killed 25 Hindu tourists and a local Muslim horse-handler. There is no official confirmation of these reports. However following these reports, Zargar is back in live news updates and prime time discussions. Who is Zargar?

Zargar was born in 1967 in Ghani Mohalla of central Srinagar. His father Ghulam Rasool Zargar was a professional photographer who ran a photography shop called ‘College Studio’ in the City’s Nai Sadak (Gaw Kadal) area. According to the police records, Zargar nicknamed as ‘Latram’, a coppersmith by profession, became involved in anti-India activities including stone-pelting incidents at a very young age. Soon, he was seen hobnobbing with prominent separatists.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Srinagar became a hotbed of militancy after four local youth – Ashfaq Majeed Wani, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Abdul Hameed Sheikh and Javed Ahmed Mir- crossed over to Pakistan to get arms training. On their return to the Valley, these Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) cadres formed a group called ‘HAJY’ which “inspired” many Kashmiri boys to turn to the gun. Zargar was one among them although he, in an interview with this newspaper many years ago had claimed, that he was already associated with the “freedom movement” and figured in police records for his involvement in anti-India activities and violence.

After Wani’s death during armed confrontation with the security forces in Srinagar’s Hawal area in March 1990, Zargar developed ideological differences with the JKLF which stands for reunification of Jammu and Kashmir to make it a sovereign and independent country. He, soon after returning from a trip to PoJK and Pakistan, founded Al-Umar Mujahideen which favoured the Muslim majority state’s merger with Pakistan.

The outfit remained very active between 1991 and 1995, mainly in Srinagar, and was involved in many incidents of violence and kidnappings. Zargar became a household name in Kashmir and beyond and was soon listed on the security forces’ “most dreaded terrorists.” He was, however, arrested during a “smooth and bloodless” raid at a residential house in Srinagar’s Saraf Kadal area on May 15, 1992, and imprisoned.

A report had said that the BSF officer who captured him was not even knowing about the “big catch fallen into his hand like a ripe cherry” till Zargar’s identity was established. After his arrest, the house was levelled by angry crowds amid rumours that the owner lady had leaked information about Zargar’s presence there to the security forces, but the “investigations” done later proved the charge wrong and she was helped by locals to rebuild her house.

Zargar was lodged in different jails in and outside J&K including Delhi’s Tihar Jail. He and Masood Azhar became closer to each other in jail.

Mohammad Masood Azhar Alvi aka Moulana Masood Azhar, a radical Islamist, was arrested by the security forces from Khanabal near Anantnag town in 1994, weeks after he had travelled to India under a fake identity showing him a journalist. Azhar, a Pakistani national, reportedly promised Zargar that he would ensure he too is freed with him ‘if the plan to get me out of here is executed successfully.”

On December 24, 1999, the IC-814 plane was during its flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi hijacked by five masked Pakistani militants of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and flown to several locations -Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai- before landing in Kandahar in Afghanistan which at that time was being controlled by the Taliban. One passenger was earlier fatally stabbed by the hijackers.

To secure the safe return of other passengers and crew, the Indian authorities released the Harkat leader Masood Azhar, who too lives somewhere in Pakistan since and has been declared a fugitive in several cases registered against him in India under anti-terrorism laws, Harkat-ul-Ansar (also known as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) member Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Zargar who were lodged in different Indian jails. Omar Saeed is known for his role in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.

The then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh took the trio on a special plane to Kandahar. The then Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and present National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and another senior operative Nehchal Sandhu - he went on to become director of the agency- were both already at Kandahar as part of the negotiating team that was speaking with Taliban about the conditions for the release of the hostages.

Subsequently, Masood Azhar, Omar Saeed Sheikh and Zargar were provided safe passage to Pakistan. After remaining active and in news for a few years, Zargar almost went into oblivion.

In March 2023, the Union Home Ministry declared Zargar an officially designated terrorist and the Al-Umar Mujahideen as a terrorist organisation. In a notification, the Home Ministry had said that Zargar is a threat to peace, not only to India but around the world, with his contacts and proximity to radical terrorist groups like the Al-Qaeda and JeM and that he was involved in several terror acts including kidnapping and ruthless murder of his adversaries and those who opposed militancy in Kashmir in early 1990s.

Last week, the J&K police while continuing with its tough campaign against former militants, alleged overground workers (OWGs) linked to separatist militant outfits and others booked in cases under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and other laws, raided Zargar’s family house along with those of twenty others across Srinagar.

Following the Home Ministry's declaration, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had attached Zargar’s family house built on two marlas (544 sq. ft) of land under the UAPA. The officials had said that it was because of the Home Ministry’s declaring Zargar as a designated terrorist under a provision of the same act that enabled the NIA to attach his ancestral property. But his family moved the court with the plea that the house was built not by him, but his forefathers and it belongs to all inheritors and not just him.