An emotional appeal of a mother paid rich dividends when a Kashmiri youth, who had joined Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba, was persuaded to surrender.
This happened in an interior area of Sopore late Thursday night after the army with the help of other security agencies laid a siege of a locality after intelligence inputs indicated presence of a militant in a house.
A senior army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Friday that the troops came to know the identity of the holed up militant as Umaq Khaliq Mir alias ‘Sameer’, a resident of Tujjar in North Kashmir.
When attempts to draw out the youth proved futile it was decided to request his parents, whose home was five kilometre away, to come and persuade him to surrender, the official said.
His mother agreed readily and came to the place and pleaded with his son as the army had assured her that they would take a lenient view in case her son surrendered.
“It was an anxious moment for us as we were risking life of a civilian along with some of my boys, who had provided human shield to the woman,” the official said.
The mother was allowed to go inside the house and request her son to come out and surrender which he eventually did.
After lot of persuasion, Mir emerged from the house and handed over one AK rifle, three magazines, three grenades and a radio set.
Mir, a 26 year-old boy of Tujjar, had been missing from May this year and had joined the LeT.
“We make all out efforts to preserve human life and this is one such example. I am glad that my decision was right because at the end, motherhood prevailed over a boy who had been brainwashed to carry out innocent killings in the state,” the official added.
After his surrender, he was handed over to the local police which arrested him.
“Mir surrendered to the army troops after being motivated for several hours through all channels including the parents. The life of a Kashmiri youth has been saved,” a senior army officer said.
Giving details about his surrender, the army officer said that “after cordoning off the area, we asked him to surrender”.
“We asked his mother to plead him to surrender so that his life is saved. We do not want loss of life. His father Khalid Mir was not at home and we brought him from another place and asked him to plead with his son to surrender,” he said.
“After two hours of the hectic parlays, he came out with parents and surrendered. This was our biggest success in ensuring surrender,” he said.
The incident comes days after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti urged police to try to bring back to their homes the “local boys” who have joined militancy instead of killing them in encounters.
“I request the police to try to bring them back to their homes, instead of them being killed in encounters,” she had said on October 21, amid unrest triggered by the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in a gun-battle with forces in July.
“Such youth (who have taken to the gun) need hand-holding... If it is possible to bring them back, make them a part of the mainstream. Give them bats, balls and good education, instead of guns. We do not want loss of life,” she said.
