SRINAGAR, Feb 2 (2000): A top Muslim militant leader on Wednesday escaped from police custody while being taken to Kashmir’s main hospital here, police said.
Mohammed Ramzan, alias General Abdullah, escaped from police guards outside the main gate of the Sri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital and fled in a waiting three-wheeler taxi, a police spokesman said.
Ramzan was chief commander of the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen group when he was arrested two years ago in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Himalayan state of Kashmir.
Ramzan was one of the 36 jailed Muslim guerrillas whose release had been demanded by Muslim militants who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane on the eve of Christmas last year.
The eight-day hijacking ended when India freed three jailed pro- Kashmiri militants.
A spokesman for Jamiat told by telephone Wednesday that the group believed Ramzan had been whisked away by Indian troops and would be killed in a fake gunbattle.
The spokesman said Ramzan was escorted by the Kashmir police to the hospital, while India’s paramilitary border guards who had ringed the building whisked him away to an unknown place.
“We suspect he may be eliminated in a fake encounter,” the caller said.
The Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen was once the most feared militant group in Kashmir, where a bloody Muslim separatist campaign since 1989 has claimed more than 25,000 lives.
