Representational photo.

NEW DELHI: Maulana Asim Umar, the chief of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) is learnt to have been killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan in September.

Umar was a resident of Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh , where he was known as Sanaul Haq alias Sannu. He lived in the Deepa Sarai locality there and had fled to Pakistan in the late 1990s.

In July 2018, Umar was designated a 'global terrorist' by the US, which added the regional branch of the global terror network on the list of 'foreign terrorist organisations'.

His death was confirmed by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security on Twitter. It also confirmed that he and "six other al-Qaida operatives were killed in a Taliban compound in Musa Qala district of Helmand province on September 23".

Umar had graduated from Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband, UP, in 1991. In Pakistan, he enrolled at the Darul Uloom Haqqania in Nowshera, the madrassa that is also known as the 'University of Jihad'. After completing his 'Deeni' and 'Askari' (jihadi literature and weapons) training, Umar joined Harkat ul Jihad al-Islami (HuJi).

Al-Qaida leader Ayman Al Zawahiri had announced the formation of AQIS to take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh in a video message in September 2014. Subsequently, he chose Umar as its chief and held a crowning ceremony in Miran Shah area of Afghanistan that year.

Indian intelligence agencies came to know about al Zawahiri designating an Indian national as the chief of AQIS out of the blue after Delhi Police 's special cell nabbed Mohammed Asif, the chief of recruitment and training of the outfit in 2015.

Agencies were surprised to know about Umar joining al-Qaida as he was already on their radar. In 2009, intelligence officials had visited Umar's house in Deepa Sarai to inform the family that their son, missing for 14 years at the time and presumed dead, was alive and working for terrorist organisation.

The news was galling to a family whose forebears had fought the British during the freedom struggle. Umar's father Irfan-ul-Haq had promptly inserted advertisements in newspapers disowning his son. They had recalled how Umar had asked for Rs 1 lakh to go to Mecca just before he disappeared in 1995.

