Srinagar, Oct. 29: Lashkar commander Abu Qasim, dubbed Jammu and Kashmir's "most wanted" militant and alleged mastermind of the August Udhampur strike on a BSF convoy in which a Pakistani militant was captured alive, was killed in an encounter today, police said.

A Pakistani with a bounty of Rs 20 lakh on his head, Qasim alias Abdul Rehman was one of the two "most wanted militants" in the state in the past five years, police officers said. The other, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen kingpin Burhan Wani, is a local and yet to be tracked down.

Besides being dubbed the plotter of the Udhampur strike in which two BSF jawans died in the Jammu pocket, Qasim, 28, had been blamed for another big attack - a 2013 ambush on an army convoy in which eight soldiers died.

Kashmir police chief Javid Mujtaba Gillani said Qasim had been active for five years, three of which he'd spent heading the Lashkar in the Valley. "It is one of the major successes we have had this year against terrorists," Gillani said, referring to the operation in south Kashmir's Kulgam where Qasim was killed early this morning.

A woman, however, claimed the slain militant was her "missing brother", Mohammad Yaqoob, who had crossed the LoC into Pakistan for arms training 15 years ago. Naseema Bano, a resident of the Khandaypora village where the encounter took place, demanded that her "brother" be buried in her village. But the police rejected the claim and insisted the man was Qasim, a resident of Bahwalpur in Pakistan.

The army, which was part of the joint operation with police and paramilitary forces, said the troops cordoned off a site in Khandaypora around midnight based on inputs Qasim and some others were holed up there. A gun battle ensued and when Qasim tried to break the cordon, he was killed, Srinagar defence spokesperson Col. N.N. Joshi said.

Police sources said Qasim had in the past broken away from several such cordons by opening a barrage of fire on the forces. "We were close to killing him on several occasions but he would simply disappear," a police officer said.

The NIA, probing the August 5 Udhampur attack during which Pakistani militant Usman was caught alive, has declared a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on Qasim and stepped up the hunt for him. The state police had announced a similar sum.

Only weeks ago, Qasim had killed a top counter-insurgent cop, Altaf Ahmad, who had gone chasing him.

"Qasim was part of the LeT (Lashkar) squad which carried out a fidayeen attack in which eight army jawans were killed in 2013. The same year, on Qasim's directions, Abu Hamza and Abu Usman, both Pakistanis, killed a former director of Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Jalal-uddin, and his security officer," a police spokesperson said today.

Other officers believe Qasim's killing assumes added significance as a number of young and educated Kashmiris had joined the ranks of militants in recent months, influenced by commanders like him and the Hizbul's Burhan.