A week back, on September 11, as the world paid homage to the victims of international terror, a kingpin of jehadi violence died a peaceful death in a New Delhi hospital.Mushtaq Ahmed Gilkar, an undertrial lodged in Tihar Jail, died at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital where he was admitted after he complained of chest pain. Gilkar was among the list of 35 militants whose release was demanded by the hijackers of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in December 1999 in Kandahar.Gilkar, 46, a dreaded Hizbul Mujahideen militant, was a prize catch for the security forces when arrested in August 1998 from Khanpur area of south Delhi.Originally from Kishtwar in Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilkar alias Peer Sahab was booked under the Explosives Substances Act, Arms Act and other sections. His dossier with the Delhi Police says he was an expert in handling Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and RDX. Gilkar first shot to infamy as the Hizbul’s divisional commander of Doda district and was involved in sending a number of recruits to Pakistan for training. For a hardcore militant, Gilkar, ironically, began his life as a teacher in November 1974.Police sources said he came into contact with Jamaat-e-Islami’s Gulam Nabi of Kishtwar who motivated him to cross the border into Pakistan in 1987. There, in 1990, he met Ali Mohammed Dar, the then deputy supreme commander of Hizbul and came back to India with an AK-47 and four magazines plus a unit of 40 militants.
