Zeenatul Islam aka Dr Usman was as old as the armed insurgency in Kashmir. Born in August 1989, he had a long tryst with militancy. According to his profile, compiled by Police and accessed by The Quint, militants of Al-Badar used to frequently stay at his home from 2002 to 2005. He was inducted into the organisation in 2006. Soon he moved to Lolab area of Kupwara where he operated in the company of top commanders like Yusuf Baloch, Sikandar and Tameem.

In 2008, he was installed as the Kashmir chief of Al-Badar. After most of his colleagues were neutralised, Islam was arrested in Sopore in 2008.

Years later, when Islam was released, he completed his B.A. degree from a college in Pulwama in 2014 and got married to a woman of his neighbourhood. Months after he became the father of a daughter, he was recycled into LeT in November 2015. On persuasion of top commanders, Waseem Malla and Saddam Paddar, Islam joined Hizbul Mujahideen. He was appointed as “District Commander” after Paddar got killed in an encounter.

Even as he claimed in his widely circulated audio message that he was shifting to Al-Badar to “strengthen” that organisation, on 5 November 2018, people in the area believed that he did not like the new Hizbul Mujahideen chief Riyaz Naikoo’s way of “spreading terror”. According to Police, he had escaped from as many as nine encounters— five times in Lolab and four times in Shopian. He was believed to be among the militants who escaped from a cordon-and-search operation in which seven militants got killed on 1 April, 2018.