The killing of the most wanted man in Kashmir — Riyaaz Naikoo, Hizbul Mujahideen’s chief in the Valley — is the biggest success for India's security forces in a long time.
Categorised as ‘A++’ in the authorities’ list of top militant commanders in J&K, Naikoo was involved in several murders, including those of policemen.
In a place where the average lifespan of a jihadist is around two to three years, his success in spearheading Pakistan’s agenda in Kashmir since June 2012, when he picked up the gun, was remarkable.
Naikoo in several ways breaks many myths on the sort of young boys who go on to join terrorist groups. He did not come from a poor family and he was a bright student who served as a mathematics teacher in his hometown in Pulwama in 2010-11.
He was born in April 1985 in Naikoo mohalla, in Panzgam, Awantipora, and was the second among his siblings—a sister and three brothers.
According to a detailed confidential report on him which News18 has accessed, he scored 464 out of 600 marks in his class XII examination and wanted to go on to study engineering.
"He was always the silent type and everyone in the village would think very highly of him. He was a regular at praying and reading Quran and at a very young age was even called upon by village elders to mediate local disputes. After his graduation he began teaching maths at a private school," the report on him states. He would often give free lessons to the underprivileged students in his village, it's been reported.
Naikoo's joining the militancy is traced back to 2010, the time of a huge public unrest in Kashmir against a fake encounter by security personnel in the Valley, in which more than a 100 people died.
A tear gas shell fired by the forces hit him as he was playing cricket in Srinagar’s Gani Memorial Stadium. Naikoo was arrested after he participated in the unrest which was fuelled more by the death of 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo, who was killed in firing by security personnel while he was playing in the stadium.
"When he was released from prison in 2012, something had changed inside the young maths teacher. On 6th June 2012, Riyaz Ahmed Naikoo had joined Hizbul Mujahideen," the report goes on to state.
Naikoo went on to become one of the most dreaded militants in the Valley, someone who kept his presence within the public through his audio and video messages when he remained out of security forces’ reach. In some of those messages, he threatened police informers and asked policemen to stay away from counterinsurgency operations.
As a militant propagandist, he was far more effective than anyone before him. Local security personnel deployed in the Valley feared for the lives of their family members after he abducted the kin of several policemen. Following this, many policemen shot videos of themselves resigning from the force.
Naikoo went on to take over the reins of Hizbul Mujahideen from militant commander Zakir Musa who had founded his own al-Qaeda front – Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind – after the death of jihadist leader Burhan Wani, whose trust Naikoo is reported to have shared.
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