Sameer Dar, Pulwama conspirator thought to be killed, is alive: Reports

Sameer Ahmad Dar, a key accused in the 2019 Pulwama attack, who was thought to have been killed in an encounter with security forces on July 31, is alive and actively working to plan terror acts, according to media reports. Dar, along with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) commander Mohammad Ismail Alvi alias Lambu, was declared dead after an operation by the counter-insurgency Victor Force in the Nagberan-Tarsar forest area of Kashmir’s Pulwama.

Also read: Lashkar commander, one of J&K’s most wanted, killed by undercover cops

The security forces, after an identification process, have concluded that the second terrorist killed with Lambu (a relative of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar) in the July operation was a Pakistani national who is yet to be identified, reports HT quoting sources.

The deaths were seen as a big success in efforts to bring Pulwama attack perpetrators to book. Lambu, from Pakistan’s Bahawalpur was one of the main perpetrators of the February 14, 2019 Pulwama attack that killed 40 security forces.

Also read: Srinagar man on 900-km walk to Delhi with one dream. Find out what

After the encounter, the security forces had identified the other terrorist killed as Sameer Dar, 22, (an A+ category terrorist) a local from Pulwama, who had joined Jaish in 2018. His name figured in the NIA chargesheet.

But, when his family was called for identification, it was confirmed the body was not that of Dar. His file photos too did not match the body, the newspaper added.

Briefing the press after Lambu’s death, the security forces had said that his neutralisation was an important development as he had been responsible for recruiting young locals “by brainwashing them”.

He was also responsible for carrying out “identification, selective identification, thereafter radicalising them and giving them weapons and putting them as the face of the overall strategy of our inimical agencies which are operating from across (the border)”, they had said, reports PTI.

They said IED Lambu had many aliases — Ismal Alvi, Saifullah and Adnan. He had trained the suicide bomber who carried out the Pulwama attack.