KS Correspondent

The liquidation of Anwar Aftab Shah, a terrorist affiliated to Hizbul Mujahideen on March 6 in an encounter at Pampore lifted the veil of secrecy regarding the active involvement of women saboteurs in the ongoing acts of terrorist violence. Shah belonged to a Pampore village Drusoo and worked with Tariq Aziz faction, operationally active in Pulwama.

At 6.45 PM on March 6, a local informer tipped the security forces about the presence of Anwar Aftab and his women collaborator, Saleema Khar of Ratnipora. SOG commandoes zeroed in on the hideout and shot dead Aftab, but Saleema, also a top wanted militant managed to break the cordon. Immediately after this episode, Saleema and another women activist of Hizb, Dilshada went underground. Police raid at Saleema’s residence at Ratnipora yielded some documents and a pistol.

Police had lurking suspicions about the existence of Kashmiri women saboteurs. A few weeks ago, a tailor Mushtaq Ahmed had a tiff with one Shaheena Rasool Ahangar, D/o Ghulam Rasool of Ratnipora, Pulwama. After the tiff, she threatened him with dire consequences. Some time later, Mushtaq was found murdered.

On March 10, police arrested Shaheena. She reportedly confessed having been an active member of Hizbul Mujahideen for eight years. Shaheena was also believed to have been close to Hizb Divisional Commander. She purportedly described herself as a courier and fund distributor of the outfit but IGP (Kashmir Range) Ashok Bhan said, "she is not from Dukhtaran-e-Millat nor is she a supporter or harbourer. She is an active militant and we recovered a wireless set and two handgrenades from her." Shaheena, as per police, was very close to Aftab Shah and Tariq Aziz. She, particularly was helping them to transport their weapons from one place to another, besides acting as a fund distributor among lower-ranked militants. Police said Shaheena had joined militancy, when she was barely studying in 8th standard and had been silently working ever since then.

Initially, police thought the involvement of women was a phenomenon restricted to Pampore-Pulwama belt. On April 3, in Solina (Ram Bagh) area of Srinagar city, Mehbooba, a woman militant belonging to Baramulla district was nabbed. She also had affiliation with Hizbul Mujahideen. A grenade was recovered from her.

Last year, in Pulwama district, camouflage propaganda was launched by militants that large number of women were acting as Army informers. This was a cover-up to conceal the involvement of local women in militancy.

Sources said that ISI, in the new phase of proxy-war, has started the use of hither to underground local activists and Kashmiri women to bring more teeth to the terrorist sabotage. These women militants have been, during the past two years, conducting a false propaganda among gullible Kashmiri women about "sexual atrocities" at the hands of security forces. In the begining of insurgency, separatists had used raked up "atrocities" of molestation and rape to a telling effect. But the Press Council of India, in its voluminous report titled ‘crisis and credibility’ debunked this dimension of psychological propaganda waged by terrorists. Local "journalists", who were acting as frontmen of this psy-warfare also got thoroughly exposed.

Observers of Kashmir scene expressed surprise, why the official media and information agencies have failed to document atrocities on women by separatists and in nailing the separatist propaganda on false accusations. Had centre reached directly to the women victims of militancy, the entire thrust of the separatist propaganda could have been changed to the disadvantage of terrorists.

The official sources say that this summer is going to witness a dangerous escalation with Pakistan bringing four thousand youths, mercenaries, ex-servicemen and serving army personnel close to LoC for infiltrating them into J&K. In this force are also 200 women trained in sabotage and for hooking security officials for passing on vital information to them. A group of ten such women travelled in a Tata Sumo recently from Jammu to Sinagar.