Afzal Guru: From medico to militant
The Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru who was hanged on Saturday was a medical college dropout-turned-militant from the separatist hotbed of the Sopore area in north Kashmir.
Guru was born in 1970 in Doobgah, 56 km from here, and after finishing his 12th standard he enrolled at Jhelum Valley Medical College here in 1989.
He left his studies midway and crossed over to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in the early nineties for arms training. After his return, however, Guru like hundreds of other Kashmiri militants, was disillusioned with the violence.
He surrendered before the security forces in 1993 and was released a few months later under “mysterious circumstances” in 1994.
In 1998, Guru married Tabassum and the couple had their only son Ghalib Guru in 2000.
He was instrumental in providing hideout and accommodation to the terrorists at Gandhi Vihar and Indira Vihar in north Delhi. He also played the pivotal role in arranging the logistics including the purchase of chemicals used for preparing the explosives.
Guru had also identified the bodies of five terrorists, Mohammed, Haider, Hamza, Rana and Raja, killed during the gun battle by the security personnel inside Parliament complex on December 13, 2001. Nine other people, including seven security forces members, were killed in the deadly attack.
Guru, a member of terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), was arrested by the police from Srinagar two days after the attack.
Guru was sentenced to death in December 2002 after being convicted of conspiracy to attack the Parliament, waging war against India and murder. He was tried by a special court designated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
Guru had reportedly said that the police made him a scapegoat.
“They have fooled the people. People still don’t know whose idea was to attack the Parliament. I was entrapped into the case by Special Task Force of Kashmir and implicated by Delhi Police Special Cell,” he had claimed in an interview with an online news portal a few years ago.
