Educationist who fled occupied Kashmir fights for his life after targeted attack

MUZAFFARABAD: A young Kashmiri educationist who had earlier fled occupied Kashmir was critically wounded in a targeted daylight attack in Muzaffarabad on Thursday.

The attacker, however, was arrested within half an hour after fleeing through a residential locality along a ravine. The weapon used in the attack was also recovered, police and witnesses said.

The victim, Arjumand Gulzar Dar, was the principal and managing director of Allama Iqbal Memorial School, an educational institution operating in a rented building along Muzaffarabad’s Western Bypass.

Originally hailing from Indian-occupied Kashmir’s Pulwama district, he had arrived in Pakistan in January 2018 for higher studies. He had reportedly married into the family of a post-1989 migrant from his home district around three years earlier and was the father of a young son, family sources said.

Hospital sources said Dar sustained three bullet wounds and remained on a ventilator in critical condition.

Police sources said Dar, whose social media activity openly reflected support for the Kashmiri freedom movement, had been facing security threats and was recently provided with two security guards.

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

As he was heading back to the school after concluding the meeting, he was shot from behind by a gunman who had apparently been monitoring his movements.

Investigators said the assailant fired three shots, causing the victim to collapse on the roadside in a pool of blood.

As bystanders rushed the injured man to a nearby hospital, the attacker fled towards the western side of the busy road. However, a police team led by Saddar SHO Abdul Wajid Alvi quickly launched a chase and apprehended the suspect near a ravine.

Video clips circulating on social media showed police personnel forcing the bearded suspect, who appeared to be about 21 years old, into a police vehicle shortly after his arrest.

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 sought refuge in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

He added that Dar was also among them and “built a peaceful life in Muzaffarabad as a migrant and educationist“.

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

One of the school guards told police he had spotted the suspect loitering outside the institution at least twice before the attack.

Investigators added the suspect had checked into a guesthouse around 800 metres from the school on Sunday and spent the next three days surveilling the area.

“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 might be involved in the attack.

Soon after the incident, reports emerged in the Indian media that an individual allegedly involved in the 2019 Pulwama attack was killed across the border in Muzaffarabad.