Suicide bomber’s family feels sorry for CRPF men

The family of 21-year old Aadil Ahmad Dar alias Waqas ‘Commando’, who rammed a car fitted with explosives into a CRPF convoy in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Thursday, killing 49 paramilitary men, feel sorry about the incident.

“Who would admire the killing of a human being in the manner they (CRPF men) got killed,” Dar’s uncle Abdul Rashid told DH over phone.

While regretting the decision of his nephew to join militant ranks and carry out such an attack, he said, “They (slain CRPF men) were human beings and had come here to earn their livelihood.”

Before joining the militancy in March 2018, Aadil was involved in stone-pelting but had never been arrested. He had received a bullet in his leg during a stone-pelting incident at Newa village in southern Pulwama district during 2016-summer unrest which broke out after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.

According to his uncle, Aadil had memorised the Holy Quran in 2015 and became inclined to religion. The man who carried out the worst terror attack in Kashmir in the last three decades of militancy was a school dropout from Gundibagh village in insurgency hotbed Pulwama district. The village is barely 10 kilometres from the spot where his car, laden with explosives, rammed into a bus carrying CRPF personnel.

“After leaving studies, Aadil would occasionally work as a labourer at construction sites. However, on March 19, 2018, he along with his cousin Sameer Dar went missing after he told his parents that he was going to meet his friend. He went on the bicycle and never came back,” he said.

Dar family had registered a missing report with the police station concerned and even made an appeal through a video on social networking sites for Aadil to return home.

A couple of months after his joining militancy, the family members accused the security forces of attempting to set their house afire and later an FIR was registered in the case after the villagers staged a protest demonstration against the incident, Rashid Dar recalled.

Aadil was the third local fidayeen militant recruited by the Jaish-e-Mohammad for a big suicide attack. Fardeen Ahmad Khan (16) of neighbouring Tral was killed on December 31, 2017, when he, along with three foreign militants, sneaked into the CRPF training centre at Lethpora and killed five personnel.