SRINAGAR: The claim by the Islamic State that it was responsible for Sunday’s attack at a police post in Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar in which one cop was killed has put the authorities in restive Valley on tenterhooks.
However, the state’s director general of police, Shesh Paul Vaid, said that it was still a matter of investigation and that nothing with certainty could be said about the presence of the terror organisation in Kashmir.
The ISIS had on its media website, Al Amaq, said on Monday, “Assassinated an element of police in firing near city of Srinagar in Kashmir.” It added, “A war has just begun.”
However, the police chief said, “They (ISIS) had made a similar claim in November (2017) when Mughees, a terrorist from Srinagar, was killed and our sub-inspector was martyred. But we don’t see any consequent change on the ground. Yet it needs verification.”
He added, “It is possible some local wolf type fellow influenced by the ideology of the ISIS is playing it up exactly the way Zakir Musa (former Hizb-ul-Mujahedin commander) appears to have been swayed by the ideology of al-Qaeda.”
