Kashmir-born Aijaz Ahmad Ahanger declared individual terrorist

PTI, Jan 5, 2023, 8:40 AM IST

A Kashmir-born dreaded terrorist, who has contacts with al-Qaeda and other global terrorist groups and is engaged in restarting the Islamic State (IS) in India, was on Wednesday declared as an individual terrorist by the government.

Aijaz Ahmad Ahanger alias Abu Usman Al-Kashmiri, currently based in Afghanistan, is one of the chief recruiters of Islamic State Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK).

He has been designated as the individual terrorist under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, the Union Home Ministry declared through a notification.

Ahanger, who was born in Srinagar in 1974, is a wanted terrorist in Jammu and Kashmir for more than two decades and has started planning terror related strategies in Jammu and Kashmir by building coordination channels between various terrorists groups.

The home ministry said Ahanger is working towards providing traction to militancy in Kashmir and has started the process of identifying people for inclusion in his Kashmir based network.

He was appointed as the head of Islamic State (IS) recruitment cell for India and had been instrumental in initiating an online India-centric ISIS propaganda magazine.

With his inclusion in the Fourth Schedule under the UAPA, 1967, Ahanger will be the 49 individual to be designated as terrorist, the notification said.