TRF head Sheikh Sajjad Gul identified as mastermind behind Pahalgam terror attack

New Delhi: Sheikh Sajjad Gul, a 50-year-old Kashmiri and head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba proxy group The Resistance Front (TRF), has emerged as the mastermind behind the Pahalgam terror attack, officials said on Wednesday. 

Reports state that he was involved in terrorist activities under the guise of running a laboratory in Kashmir.

Currently holed up in the cantonment town of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, under the patronage of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Gul — who also goes by the alias Sajjad Ahmed Sheikh — has been a key planner behind numerous terror attacks. These include targeted killings in Central and South Kashmir between 2020 and 2024, grenade attacks in Central Kashmir in 2023, and ambushes of J&K police personnel in Bijbehara (Anantnag), Gagangir, and the Z-Morh Tunnel in Ganderbal, reported PTI.

The NIA designated him a terrorist in April 2022 and announced a reward of ₹10 lakh for information leading to his capture.

Officials say that during the investigation into the Pahalgam terror attack, links and communications were traced back to Gul. The TRF has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Under Gul’s instructions, the group reportedly shot 25 tourists at point-blank range after asking their religion during the April 22 attack in Pahalgam. The terrorists also killed a local tourist guide.

Used by Pakistan’s external intelligence agency ISI as a Kashmiri frontman for the largely Punjabi-dominated LeT, Gul was educated in Srinagar, earned an MBA in Bengaluru, and later completed a lab technician course in Kerala. He returned to the Valley, opened a diagnostic lab, and began providing logistical support to the terror outfit, reported PTI.

While working as an overground worker (OGW) for the group, Gul was arrested by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell in 2002 at Nizamuddin Railway Station with 5 kilograms of RDX. Officials revealed he had been conducting reconnaissance for a planned series of blasts in the national capital. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on August 7, 2003.

After his release in 2017, he moved to Pakistan, where the ISI selected him to lead The Resistance Front — a LeT proxy — in 2019 to give the terror movement in Jammu and Kashmir an indigenous facade.

The creation of the TRF was an ISI strategy in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack in February 2019, as Pakistan faced global condemnation for supporting terror outfits like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

His brother, a former doctor at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar, was also a terrorist in the 1990s. He later migrated to Saudi Arabia and then to Pakistan, where he is now involved in terror financing alongside fugitives based in Gulf countries.