The police claims about the arrests of “white-collar militant operatives”, including two Kashmiri doctors, appear to suggest that militancy continues to be a troubling magnet for the educated in Kashmir.
Academics and PhD scholars from the Valley are known to have joined the militancy in the past, but labels like “white-collar jihadis” and “hybrid terrorists” have also been used to target journalists and other civil society members.
There’s a possibility of the involvement of a third Kashmiri doctor, who is on the run, the police said, adding a manhunt was underway for him.
Dr Adeel Ahmad Rather, arrested from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, is from Wanpora in Kulgam, while Dr Muzammil Ahmad Ganai, arrested from Faridabad in Haryana, is from Koil in Pulwama.
So far, neither has been accused of direct involvement in any militant operation.
A police spokesman in Srinagar said the duo had been “involved in identifying persons to radicalise, initiate and recruit to terrorist ranks, besides raising funds, arranging logistics, procurement of arms/ ammunition and material for preparing IEDs”.
Sources said the two doctors were engaged in radicalising “professionals and students” and were “in contact with foreign handlers, operating from Pakistan and other countries”.
While the security agencies gave few details, independent views were difficult to obtain on Monday evening. Even doctors representing some Valley-based medical associations refused to speak on the subject because of the sensitivities involved.
An acquaintance of one of the arrested doctors said the news was “impossible to believe” as he led “a very normal life”.
“He was religious, no doubt, but it’s hard to believe he could have been a militant,” he said, requesting anonymity.
A student leader said a few families had reached out to his organisation and said the men had been falsely implicated.
The arrests come in a year that saw militant recruitment from Jammu and Kashmir plunge to a historic low, with the total number of confirmed local rebels falling to a single digit.
Overall, however, militancy remains a formidable challenge, sustained by foreign militants adept in jungle warfare who have inflicted big casualties on the security forces and civilians.
Down the years, hundreds of Kashmir’s educated have felt the pull of insurgency.
Security personnel stand guard following the arrest of Dr. Adeel (a resident of Wanpora, Kulgam), accused in an interstate and transnational terror module, in Anantnag, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. PTI
In 2017, the security forces shot dead Azharuddin Khan, 27, who had a PhD in Arabic, in a gunfight. Khan was a lecturer in Kupwara.
Militant ideologue Manan Wani, who was doing his PhD in geology at Aligarh Muslim University, and Rafi Ahmad Bhat, a doctor of sociology and assistant professor with Kashmir University, were killed in separate gunfights in 2018.
While their involvement was confirmed, there have been multiple instances of professionals accused of militancy links being freed by the courts.
In recent years, the Jammu and Kashmir police and the army have targeted dissenting civil society members using a bouquet of appellations, from “narrative terrorism” and “white-collar terrorism” to “distant radicalisation groups”.
The police’s State Investigation Agency had in 2022 filed a chargesheet against journalist Fahad Shah and research scholar Aala Fazili in what it called a “narrative terrorism case”. They were detained for years before being released by the courts.