Jaish chief reserves best weapons for his nephews, while rest fight with SLRs

Jammu, Nov 8: In a span of one year, the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir have gunned down two nephews of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar.

The two nephews killed in separate encounters with the security forces were Talha Rashid and Usman Haider. While Rashid was killed in November 2017, Usman was shot dead during the Tral encounter on October 30 this year.

Interestingly, following the encounter, the police recovered the deadly M4 Carbine from both the nephews. The first recovery of the M4 Carbine was from Rashid who was killed in an encounter at Pulwama. The second one was at Tral this year.

The recoveries clearly suggest that the best of the weapons have been reserved for the family of the Jaish chief. In both the encounters, the security forces had recovered the M4 Carbine from the nephews of the Jaish chief. The other terrorists who fought along with them possessed the AK-47 rifles.

The terrorists in the Valley, especially those who are part of the Hizbul Mujahideen have been facing a weapon crunch. Outfits such as the Jaish and Lashkar-e-Tayiba have been fighting alongside the Hizbul for sometime now.

The Hizbul in fact has the largest number of terrorists. However this number has not made them lethal automatically as many of them do not even have weapons with them.

An Intelligence Bureau official points out to OneIndia that many of them are just social media stars. He also said that the photograph of Hizbul terrorist Samir Tiger posing with the M4 Carbine had worried them initially. It was only later that it was revealed that he had borrowed the weapon from Haider to pose with it and post it on the social media, the officer also revealed.

In this context it would be interesting to re-visit the recent statement made by Hizbul commander, Riyaz Naikoo. In an audio message, he said that the biggest problem they were facing was regarding the lack of weapons.

Naikoo goes on to say that the biggest problem they are facing is with regard to weapons. The AK-47 was used in the 1990s by terrorists and till date this continues to be our weapon. In fact most of us do not have that as well, he goes on to say.

In the 1990s terrorists would carry with them five magazines, but today we have only two or three. He said when their colleagues get killed in an encounter their parents ask if their son possessed enough weapons to fight. We have no words at that time. This year 40 of our colleagues have died. You shall know what we have got from our base camp. Our boys are fighting merely with pistols and SLRs.