Three J&K Govt Employees Sacked Over Terror Links

The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration, over the last five years, has been actively weeding out alleged overground workers of terrorist groups from the union territory’s civil and administrative setup. It is estimated that the government has dismissed somewhere between 75 to 80 government employees found with such links.

Earlier today, three more individuals who had been found to have alleged ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) were dismissed from service. This includes a police constable (Malik Ishfaq Naseer), a teacher in the school education department (Ajaz Ahmed), and a junior assistant in Srinagar’s Government Medical College (Waseem Ahmad Khan).

J&K’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has been seen as making the elimination of terrorist support within the government administration a priority ever since he took charge in August 2020. He has dismissed many such alleged overground workers from service, as he has done in the case of the three who got dismissed today, under Section 311(2) (c) of the Constitution, which empowers the administration to dismiss a government employee without holding an inquiry in the interest of the state’s security.

The three who were dismissed, currently in judicial custody, weren’t just sympathisers, according to security officials, but active terror associates, who facilitated arms smuggling, attacks on security forces, and provided logistical support. Naseer, a police constable since 2007, was allegedly helping LeT in dropping arms, explosives and narcotics in the union territory. According to security officials, he would share the coordinates of safe locations where these consignments could be dropped with his Pakistan-based LeT handlers, while also helping collect and distribute arms and ammunition to terrorists in the region. Naseer’s brother Malik Asif Naseer, an alleged LeT fighter, had been killed by security forces during an encounter in 2018, and Naseer’s own link to the terror outfit was exposed in 2021 during an investigation in a case related to smuggling of arms and explosives.

Ahmed, the teacher who was dismissed, was working in the School Education Department since 2011. He was allegedly a trusted associate for HM in the Poonch region. His link with the terror outfit was exposed during a routine check in November 2023, when he was allegedly found carrying arms, ammunition and posters of HM along with a friend in his vehicle. Ahmed, it is alleged, had received the consignment on the direction of his handler, a HM terrorist called Abid Ramzan Sheikh in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and was on his way to deliver them to terrorists. According to officials, Ahmed had been helping HM this was for several years.

The third to be dismissed, Khan from Srinagar’s Government Medical College, had been working in the medical college since 2007. He is alleged to have links to both LeT and HM, and claimed to have helped terrorists in many attacks across the valley. This includes the 2018 case of the journalist Shujaat Bukhari, who was gunned down along with his two security officers in Srinagar, by three men on a motorcycle. The police claim Khan was a conspirator in that case, and that he had provided critical logistical support, even accompanying the attackers during the execution of the attack and helping them escape afterwards. Khan was arrested a couple of months after Bukhari’s assassination, when the police were investigating a terror attack in Batmaloo in J&K.

employees suspendedGovernor Manoj SinhaHizbul MujahideenJammu and KashmirLashkar-e-TaibaPahalgam