Suspect in Bombings Arrested in Kashmir

A top Kashmiri militant commander blamed for dozens of attacks and tourist killings has been arrested in the Indian-controlled portion of the contested Himalayan state, dealing a major setback for the separatist rebels, police said Saturday.

Mudassir, who goes by a single name, is believed to be the chief planner of Lashkar-e- Taiba, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan. He is linked to “25 incidents of grenade attacks and other violent incidents,” said Gopal Sharma, the directorgeneral of police in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, where the suspect was arrested. He did not say when the arrest was made.

“He is the organizer and the kingpin of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the [Kashmir] valley,” Sharma said.

Authorities believe Mudassir planned a series of July 11 grenade attacks that killed nine tourists in Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar.

The arrest “is a great setback to the militants,” Sharma said. “But then, you end one terror module and another one comes up.”

Mudassir also is believed to have planned three June 11 grenade attacks in Jammu and Kashmir’s winter capital, Jammu. Those attacks killed one man and wounded 29 people, Sharma said, maintaining that the strikes had been carried out to avenge the previous day’s assault on top separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani by Hindu nationalists.

Geelani, who heads the hard-line faction of All Party Hurriyat Conference, the region’s main separatist alliance, rejected the allegation, saying, “We don’t believe in revenge politics.”

More than a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, demanding Kashmir’s independence or its merger with neighboring Pakistan.

More than 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict.