The urge to contest elections and enter politics saw a trained Hizbul Mujahideen militant tracked down and landed in the UP police net on Monday, more than 30 years after he attacked policemen in Deoband in Saharanpur with grenades hand in August 1993, senior police officials said. Tuesday.

Officials said he contested the election from Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam assembly constituency against Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, but lost heavily and got only 1,583 votes. His bond was also posted. Earlier, he contested elections to other local bodies several times but failed to win, they added.

A senior ATS official said the accused, who was 21 when he attacked the policemen, was identified by one of his accomplices when his latest photographs surfaced on social media while contesting the assembly polls. “We first verified his identity by sending a team to Budgam in October and the operation was planned to arrest him secretly,” he said, adding, “The accused was arrested from his present hideout in Rakh Kahermulla locality of Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir”.

He said that the Saharanpur police has declared the reward ₹25,000 upon his arrest on November 4 after a local court had issued a non-bailable warrant against him recently in October.

Saharanpur Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Sagar Jain confirmed that the accused identified as Nazar Ahmad Wani alias Mushtaq Ahmad alias Nazeer Ahmad alias Mustafa Wani alias Javed Iqbal, 51, was arrested from Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir in a joint operation by the Saharanpur Police and a local unit of the UP Anti Terror Squad (ATS) on Sunday. The accused was taken to Saharanpur on Monday for further court proceedings.

He said the accused was wanted in the hand grenade attack on a police team near Union Junction on August 26, 1993, in which four persons, including two constables Kanhaiya Lal and Arjuman Ali, and two civilians Jai Prakash Saini and Sukhbir, sustained injuries. .

He said he was arrested then and granted bail by a local court in October 1993 after two months of applying for admission to a medical course. The police later found that both his bail bonds were fake and the accused disappeared from his hideout in Deoband, Saharanpur and started living in his native place of Budgam, changing his identity.

He said Wani revealed during interrogation that he was trained by the militant group Hizbul Mujahideen in Pak Occupied Kashmir and Afghanistan for about two years between 1989 and 1991.

“He shifted his base to Deoband, Saharanpur to get admission in any of the Islamic institutes but started selling caps and ‘Tasbeeh’ there and got involved in a hand grenade attack in August 1993. He confessed that engaged in a fierce encounter with the army in Jammu. and Kashmir but was never arrested and eventually started living a normal civilian life after a certain age,” he said.

“His election statement stated that he has shown himself to be a businessman and that he has his own worth ₹4.3 million inclusive ₹11.6 lakh in cash value and property value ₹4.18 million,” he added.