Srinagar: Four-feet tall in his boots, his walk marked by a limp, Noor Muhammad Tantray was carried to his grave in the village of Aripal, in southern Kashmir’s Tral, by a crowd of thousands, shouting anti-India slogans and throwing stones at police. Long a key figure in the local Jaish-e-Muhammad and lieutenant to Parliament House attack organiser Rana Tahir Nadeem, also known as Ghazi Baba, Tantray had been arrested, served five years in jail, and then, after being paroled, resumed terrorist attacks before being killed in 2017.

Earlier that year , Zakir Bhat—the founder of the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, al-Qaeda’s Kashmir affiliate—had threatened to chop off the heads of leaders who opposed the imposition of the Shari’a.

Twenty-three at the time, Irfan Ahmad Wagay —the Sringar

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