Ahmed Ali Fayyaz/Srinagar

In just three hours of Rashmi Ranjan Swain taking over as the Director General of the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Tuesday, unidentified terrorists shot dead a Kashmiri Policeman who was on leave from his duty to be with his wife and seven daughters in his native village in northwestern Kashmir and prepare for his daughter's wedding due in two months.

Terrorists who are believed to be separatists have laid an ambush close to the house of head constable Ghulam Mohammad Dar in the village of Wailoo Kralpora in the Baramulla district. As soon as he disembarked from his motorcycle to open the gate of his house at the dusk he was fired upon.

The killing of Dar, 55, is consistent with the trend of terrorists looking for soft targets, especially security personnel on leave and returning to their families to spend a day or two with them.

Dar’s death leaves behind this all-women family – his seven unmarried daughters and wife. He was posted in the Srinagar District Police and had completed 25 years as a proud policeman. He was getting his house ready for the upcoming wedding of his first daughter Ultaf Gul.

Maqsooda Dar and Ulfat Gul

“The whole day he was working at home with a local plumber. In the evening, he dropped the plumber Zamir at his residence in a nearby village, Chukur. As soon as he returned home was got down from his motorcycle to open the gate, and the terrorists fired at him. Abuji’s killing has completely shattered our family”, Uzmat Gul, Dar’s 22-year-old daughter told Awaz-The Voice.

“We are finished. We are a family of seven sisters and a mother. Now we have no male member and nobody to sustain the family”, a sobbing Uzmat said.

Dar’s wife Maqsooda, 50 is a homemaker; the eldest daughter, Ulfat Gul, 25, quit her studies after passing the Class 12th exam. The second daughter Uzmat Gul, 22 is a student of B.A. 1st year at Government Degree College Pattan. The third one, Shabnam Gul,,20, is a Class 12th student at Government Higher Secondary School, Hardushora.

The fourth daughter of the family, Aqsa Gul, 18 is a Class 10th student at Government High School Wailoo. Dar’s youngest three daughters - Sanobar Gul, 16, in Class 9th, Sumera Gul, 12 in Class 6th and Seerat-ur-Rafia, 5 in Nursery are students at the Army Goodwill School Ziran, Tangmarg.

Dar’s brother-in-law Munshi Shabir Ahmad said that the assassins escaped in a vehicle in the direction of Pattan and left him bleeding in a pool of blood.

“For some time, nobody dared to move out. Thereafter, my sister and nieces rushed out. He appeared to have died on the spot but still, the family members and their neighbours rushed him to Sub District Hospital Tangmarg where doctors declared him dead”, Munshi Shabir said.

Grieving family members of the slain cop Ghulam Mohammad Dar showing his picture on mobile

Shabir said that Dar’s body was taken to Baramulla where Police and civil officers performed his wreath-laying ceremony. Thereafter the body was taken back to Kralpora where the last rites were performed at 2 am.

“We wanted to conduct his funeral today (Wednesday) but his brutal assassination spread a wave of terror in the whole area. Then we decided to go for the burial immediately. Due to the fear, very few people participated in the funeral prayers. But a good number of people visited us today (Wednesday)”, Shabir added.

Only some junior officers turned up to extend condolences to the bereaved family. Until this story was filed, no senior officer or politician had called on the family. Former Minister and the Tangmarg MLA Ghulam Hassan Mir, who is now vice president of the Apni Party, according to Shabir, was the only political leader who visited the family.

Bureaucrat-turned-politician Farooq Shah, who is now the National Conference’s nominated candidate for the Assembly elections in the same area, said that he and his party colleagues would visit the family in big numbers on Thursday and Friday.

“Due to some security reasons, we couldn’t go there today. We have unequivocally condemned this brazen act of terror and senseless violence and we will be all there tomorrow and at the Rasm-e-Chaharum”, Shah asserted.

Maqsooda as well as her brother Shabir maintained that in his 25 years of service, Dar was never posted in the counterinsurgent Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K Police where jawans and officers become special targets of the separatist militants.

However, terrorists in the last 33 years have not spared personnel of the soft wings either. Of the 1,607 Police personnel killed since 1989, more than 50 percent had been working in non-operational wings.

“He never received any threat from militants or any other person. We were simply preparing for our eldest daughter’s wedding which is fixed for next month. Now that we are completely devastated, we want justice. Before any other support, we want his killers to be identified and brought to justice. This is the Government’s responsibility”, said Maqsooda, sitting in the group of her seven daughters and mourning her husband’s killing.

According to Shabir, for most of his service in Police, Dar had served as a clerk-reader with his Deputy Superintendents of Police and he was in no way associated with the intelligence or counterterror wings of the force. After a tenure of six years in Pulwama, he was posted in District Police Lines, Srinagar, where he was serving for the last over one year.

Women greiving at the residence of the slain cop Ghulam Mohammad Dar

With a sudden spurt in violence, Tuesday’s terror attack on Dar was the third one in a row in Kashmir. On Sunday, Inspector Masroor Ahmad Wani was left critically wounded when he was in civvies and playing cricket with his neighbours at Eidgah in Srinagar. He is battling for life at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). On Monday, terrorists shot dead a labourer from UP in Pulwama.

People in the area are in shock and wonder why Dar was killed. They wonder if his daughters'  admission to the Army’s Goodwill School or the engagement of his eldest daughter to a person who was employed with the Army had angered the terrorists.

However, they soon dismiss these speculations on the ground that hundreds of people in many villages in the Tangmarg-Pattan belt are working in the Army and many of their children are studying at the Army schools.

“None of them has been targeted to date. There has been no incident of militancy in this area since long”, said Bashir Ahmad, a shopkeeper at Kunzar. Reportedly the last encounter happened at Hardushora Sultanpora in which one soldier and one SPO got killed but the militants managed to escape.

People also remember an encounter at Hardu Bani in which Pakistani terrorist Gazi Baba’s close associates, Saifullah Gazali and Abu Muawiyah, were killed in February 2002.

In the last 5 years, one encounter took place across the Srinagar-Tangmarg Road at Malwah, in the foothills of Gogaldara forest, in which LeT’s top wanted commander Yusuf Kantroo was killed along with his associates, Hilal Sheikh and Faisal Dar, on 21 April 2022.

“We are shocked over this kind of terror killing in this area which has seen peace, normalcy, and tourism over the last 10 years”, said a retired Police official at Chandilora. He recollected that the Tangmarg-Pattan was a stronghold for militants in the first 10-15 years of insurgency. Hizbul Mujahideen’s first ‘Chief Commander’ Ahsan Dar was also a resident of the same area. 

Three decades back, some high-profile hostages were held in the same area. “But there have been no such apprehensions for a long time”, said the retired Police official.