Before the gunfight started between slain Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Abu Dujana and security forces on Wednesday, the ‘most wanted’ terrorist had rejected a phone call from an Army officer who had asked him to surrender, saying that he had left his parents in Gilgit-Baltistan for jihad.
In the telephonic conversation between Dujana and the officer, Dujana asks the officer, “Kya haal hai? Maine kaha, kya haal hai (how are you. I asked, how are you)?”
“Humara haal chhor Dujana. Why don't you surrender? (You have married this girl. What you are doing isn't right.),” the officer asked Dujana.
The officer tells Dujana that he is being used by Pakistani agencies to incite terror in Kashmir, but Dujana remains defiant.
Dujana replies, “Hum nikley thhey shaheed hone. Main kya karu. Jisko game khelna hai, khelo. Kabhi hum aage, kabhi aap, aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak ho aapko. Jisko jo karna hai karlo (I'd left home for martyrdom. What can I do? Sometimes we are ahead, sometimes you—today you caught me. Congratulations. Now do what you have to)”.
“Surrender nahi kar sakta. Jo meri kismat may likha hoga, Allah wahi karega, theek hai? (I won't surrender. Allah does what's fated, okay?” he added.
The officer advises Dujana to show concern for his parents back home but he says that he left his family back in Gilgit-Baltistan. “Maap baap toh uss din mar gaye jis din main unko chhor kar aaya (my parents died the day I left them behind),” he said.
The officer continued to make contentious appeals to Dujana to save Kashmiris and not recruit youth for terror, but he abruptly ends the chat. For the last time, the officer asks the civilian to tell Dujana to surrender, but the LeT commander gives no reply.
After giving the security forces a slip on several occasions, Abu Dujana was finally neutralised on Tuesday after a seven-hour gunfight in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
Dujana’s routine of meeting his wife, and sometimes other women, was known to the security forces. In fact, Kashmir zone IGP Munir Khan told the media that he had become an “eyesore” for many locals because he would “barge into any house and did whatever he wanted to”, and that “he was a threat for the girls of the area”.
