Shujaat Bukhari, editor-owner of Rising Kashmir, English language newspaper published from Srinagar was killed right in front of his office on Residency road. He had a premonition of his death after his name had figured in a WordPress blog that called him a traitor to the movement (read separatist movement).

Shujaat had met all who mattered in the separatist circles to seek their intervention in this vilification campaign that is usually a precursor to someone’s targeted killing. It was a kind of moral justification for killing a person in those days.

Three years later, the police are close to cracking the link between the internet propaganda against him and his assassins, who had been identified and possibly killed. Babur Qadari, a vocal invitee to numerous TV debates on Kashmir was also killed the same way.

 After painstaking investigation into the web world and the real links of embedded enemies in society, the Special Task Force (SIT) of Jammu and Kashmir police arrested five members of this since banned ‘intimidation syndicate’ kashmirfights.wordpres.com.

In what is described as a major breakthrough the police arrested five persons including Secretary Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), Mohammad Akbar Sofi, and his two sons for their alleged role in threatening social activists, political leaders, Government officers and journalists.

Sofi has had a meteoritic rise in career and everyone is wondering who all have helped him stay put there and continue as an embedded terrorist.

Terming it a “major breakthrough” Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar said that the arrests were made during which houses and properties at multiple locations in Srinagar, and Poonch in Jammu and in other parts of Kashmir were searched.

Vijay Kumar said, “In one house alone, 32 mobile phones, one tablet, two laptops, four hard disk storage devices, seven memory cards and one dongle were seized.”

The five persons include Secretary SMC, Sofi Muhammad Akbar from Rajbagh, his daughter Advocate Nazish Yasrab Rehman and his son Tabish Akbar Rehman from Sanatnagar, Peerzada Raqif Makhdoomi from Batpora in Hazratbal and Javed Khalid from Poonch.

Javid Khalid is the fiance of Nazish and has also contested the recent municipal elections unsuccessfully.

He said that Sofi was a former militant who later managed to get a job in SMC and rose to the Secretary level position despite allegations of corruption and accumulation of huge wealth beyond known sources of income.

Sofi received the Real Hero Award 2021 recently that was presented by the Parliamentary members headed by NDA’s Chirag Paswan as he had managed high profile contacts.

“It is worth mentioning that Kashmir fight.wordpress.com was being run by a white-collar (militants) syndicate whose task was to prepare a strategic hit list of Government officers, journalists, social activists, lawyers, political functionaries who were assessed by the syndicate to be responsible for Harming the Overarching objectives of furthering and sustaining the Pakistani supported (militant) programme with the eventual aim of secession of Jammu and Kashmir from the Indian Union and its eventual annexation with Pakistan.”

He said with the arrest of the kingpins and the discovery of a huge number of digital devices and the analysis of the data therein, it is expected that the ultimate plans behind the murder of journalist Shujaat Bukhari, advocate Babar Qadri, and businessman Satpal Nischal would come to the fore.

“It may be recalled that the blog site Kashmirfight.wordpress.com had designed a modus operandi wherein the name of the victim was first published, he was profiled giving detailed justification as to how and why he is a legitimate target for the (militants) and subsequently his actual execution by the (militants).”