Islamic State Khorasan chief Farooqui, who plotted Kabul gurdwara attack, arrested

Four gunmen stormed had stormed a religious gathering of Afghanistan’s Sikhs in their place of worship in the heart of the Afghan capital’s old city

Updated on: Apr 4, 2020, 21:03:51 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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In a special operation by Afghan security forces today, the so-called emir of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) Mawlawi Abdullah aka Aslam Farooqui was arrested on charges of orchestrating the attack on Kabul Gurdwara on March 25.

Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) Mawlawi Abdullah aka Aslam Farooqui has been arrested by the Afghan security forces

Pakistani national Mawlawi Abdullah, who was earlier associated with proscribed Lashkar-e-Tayebba (LeT) group and then Tehreek-e-Taliban terror group, replaced Mawlawi Zia-ul-Haq aka Abu Omar Khorasani as ISKP chief in April 2019. Farooqi belongs to Mamozai tribe and from Orakzai agency area on Pak-Afghan border.

According to counter-terror operatives in Kabul and Delhi, Mawlawi Farooqi on the instructions of Haqqani Network and LeT used Kasaragod resident Muhsin Tikaripur along with three other Urdu-Punjabi speaking attackers to massacre 27 innocent Sikh men and women in Shor Bazaar, Kabul. Mushin was killed in the attack and his mother in Kerala was informed of his death. The leader of Haqqani Network Sirajuddin is also the sword arm of the Taliban with very close links to the Pakistani deep state. An Indian national Tihan Singh was also killed in the attack.

ALSO WATCH | ‘Saddened to hear about terror attack on gurudwara in Kabul’: PM Modi

Although 27 Sikhs were killed in the terror attack that was criticised by US, allies and India, the main target of ISKP was the Indian Embassy in Kabul as both Pakistan and Taliban want India out of the developing Afghan political equation in the context of a peace deal with US. Similar threats have been posed to Indian consulates in Jalalabad, Herat and Kandahar with India forced to withdraw its staff for purposes of safety.

Mawlawi Farooqui is now going to be questioned by Afghan National Directorate of Security to find out who ordered the attack on innocent Sikhs and what was the role of Pakistan in the terror strike. Farooqui is also expected to come up with names of his other terrorists in his group, which operates in Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar, Kabul and Kandahar area.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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