When JKLF leader Bitta Karate admitted to killing 20 Kashmiri Pandits

As a gun-toting terrorist, Bitta Karate claimed he shot each Kashmiri Pandit victim either in the head or the heart and never missed his target.

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When JKLF leader Bitta Karate admitted to killing 20 Kashmiri Pandits

Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate

New Delhi,UPDATED: May 24, 2017 17:58 IST

India Today has dug out Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate's admission on camera from the archives where he made a shocking admission of having killed 20 Kashmiri Pandits.

In the video, he is heard saying that his first victim was Satish Kumar Tikoo, whose crime was that he was a Kashmiri Pandit and "was believed to be from the RSS."

"Used to get orders to kill. Would have killed brother and mother," he said in the chilling confession.

As a gun-toting terrorist, Bitta Karate claimed he shot each Kashmiri Pandit victim either in the head or the heart and never missed his target.

The Kashmiri separatist leader was exposed in India Today's special investigative report 'Operation Villains of the Valley' where he was caught on camera confessing to receiving funds from Pakistan.

Acting on India Today's expose #HurriyatTruthTapes, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing the transfer of funds to some separatist leaders in Kashmir and have questioned Karate.

WHO IS BITTA KARATE?

The separatist leader was imprisoned for killing of innocent Hindus and terrorism-related charges from June 1990 to October 2006. He was arrested and detained under the Public Safety Act and had over 19 militancy related cases on him. He was arrested again during the Amarnath dispute in 2008.
The Public Safety Act, under which Dar was arrested in 1990, was quashed by the Supreme Court before his release from jail.
Bitta participated in the 1990 ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus and has claimed to have killed over twenty people in the Valley.
On October 23, 2006, TADA court in Jammu granted bail to Bitta Karate and was handed over to his family two days later.
Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate (Image source: @AJ_Das_JK)
Bitta Karate spent many years behind the bars but was eventually released by TADA court on bail on October 23, 2006.
Karate, blamed by the minority Pandit community for a string of killings of its members, was arrested on June 2, 1990.
Before joining militancy, Karate, against whom 23 FIRs - mostly related to murder - have been lodged, was a martial arts practitioner, which fetched him the alias of Karate.
When the Congress-People's Democratic Party (PDP) coalition came to power in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002, a number of undertrials - some detained for over a decade - were set free but Karate was the only exception.
Dar was a top commander of the JKLF when the outfit was underground. The JKLF, which spearheaded the "movement" for an independent Kashmir, declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1994 and decided to launch a non-violent movement.
This man was amongst the first batch of misguided Kashmiri youth to cross the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for arms training in 1988. He used the gun in 1990s to spread terror.