Terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba’s commander Akram Khan alias Ghazi, who pushed the youth of India’s Jammu and Kashmir to pick up arms against the state, was reportedly killed in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The development comes within a week after Khwaja Shahid, one of the terrorists who was behind the 2018 Sunjwan terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir was abducted and later found beheaded in Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
In less than three months, this is the third significant elimination of a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist. In September, LeT commander Riyaz Ahmed was killed outside Al Quddus mosque in Rawalkot area of Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
Ghazi was shot dead by bike-borne men in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district, about 132 km north of provincial capital Peshawar. According to reports, Ghazi’s elimination is being downplayed by the Pakistani establishment who have invested heavily to export terrorism into India’s Jammu and Kashmir.
What does it mean?
Akram Khan is reported to be one of the top recruiters for LeT at least between the period of 2018 and 2020. Sources cited by the Times of India newspaper said that Khan was responsible for radicalising scores of terrorists who infiltrated into India’s Jammu and Kashmir in multiple batches in the last two years.
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“Ghazi was a key member of Lashkar’s central recruitment cell and known for his hate-filled speech against India,” a source was quoted as saying by the Times of India.
Other recent killings are that of LeT operatives Maulana Ziaur Rehman, who was shot dead in Karachi, and Mufti Qaiser Farooq, who was shot in Gulshan-i-Umar seminary.
Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Shahid Latif, the chief handler of the terror squad that attacked the Pathankot airbase in 2016 in India’s Punjab, was gunned down by unidentified assailants in a mosque in Sialkot, Pakistan, on October 10.
(With inputs from agencies)
