Kashmiri educationist critically wounded in targeted attack in Muzaffarabad

MUZAFFARABAD: A young Kashmiri educationist who had moved to Pakistan from Indian-occupied Kashmir was critically injured in a targeted daylight shooting in Muzaffarabad on Thursday, while the suspected attacker was arrested within about half an hour, according to police and witnesses.

The injured man was identified as Arjumand Gulzar Dar, principal and managing director of Allama Iqbal Memorial School, which operates from a rented building on Muzaffarabad’s Western Bypass. Dawn reported that Dar originally belonged to Pulwama district in Indian-occupied Kashmir and had come to Pakistan in January 2018 for higher studies.

Family sources said he had married into the family of a post-1989 migrant from his home district around three years ago and was the father of a young son.

Attack and arrest

Hospital sources said Dar suffered three bullet injuries and was on a ventilator in critical condition. Police sources said his social media activity openly showed support for the Kashmiri freedom movement and that he had been facing security threats, after which he was recently assigned two security guards.

According to investigators, Dar had told his guards earlier in the day that some guests would be coming to see him around noon. When the visitors arrived in a double-cabin pickup outside the school, he went out to meet them without asking the guards to accompany him.

Investigators said that after the meeting ended and Dar was returning towards the school, a gunman who had apparently been watching his movements shot him from behind. Police said three shots were fired, and Dar fell on the roadside. Bystanders then shifted him to a nearby hospital, while the attacker ran towards the western side of the road.

A police team led by Saddar SHO Abdul Wajid Alvi then pursued the suspect and arrested him near a ravine in a residential area. The weapon used in the attack was also recovered, police and witnesses said. Video clips circulating on social media showed police personnel placing the bearded suspect, who appeared to be around 21 years old, into a police vehicle soon after the arrest.

Investigation under way

Senior police officials, including DIG Shehryar Sikander and SSP Riaz Mughal, oversaw the initial investigation at Saddar police station. The suspect was identified as a resident of Nawababad in Taxila, Rawalpindi district.

One of the school’s guards told police he had seen the suspect loitering outside the institution at least twice before the shooting. Investigators said the suspect had checked into a guesthouse about 800 metres from the school on Sunday and had spent the following three days monitoring the area.

SSP Riaz Mughal told Dawn that police had introduced a digital system for monitoring hotel guests and said the guesthouse had not shared the suspect’s details with police.

“We have developed an application, Hotel Eye, through which hotel and guesthouse operators are required to share details of their guests with the police so that suspicious individuals or persons involved in unlawful activities can be identified in time. However, this guesthouse failed to provide any information about this suspicious person, which amounts to a serious violation of our guidelines,” SSP Riaz Mughal told Dawn .

Law enforcement officials suspect that a hostile foreign intelligence service may have been involved in the attack. Dawn also reported that soon after the incident, Indian media carried reports claiming that a person allegedly linked to the 2019 Pulwama attack had been killed across the border in Muzaffarabad.

Background

Uzair Ghazali, a local leader, said that over the past three decades, thousands of Kashmiris had fled arrests, torture and persecution by Indian forces and taken refuge in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. He said Dar was among them and had “built a peaceful life in Muzaffarabad as a migrant and educationist“.