SRINAGAR, Aug 26: A powerful militant group has admitted that one of its members killed a separatist leader in Indian-held Kashmir, in a report released on Friday.

Moulana Shoukat Ahmad Shah, a respected cleric and strong pro-independence supporter, was assassinated on April 8 in a bomb blast in Srinagar, as he entered a mosque. Militant groups had earlier blamed the daylight killing on Indian security agencies who they accused of seeking to “sabotage the freedom struggle of Kashmiris”.

But an “internal probe” by the anti-India militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) said that one of its own members, Javed Munshi, was responsible for the killing of Mr Shah, who was regarded as a moderate voice in Kashmiri politics.

“At first instance, we thought Indian agencies and troops had martyred him (Shah) to weaken the (separatist) movement,” said the LeT report, handed to senior Kashmir separatists by the group on Thursday.

“One thing we never thought was that our own (man) killed the Moulana,” it said.

Munshi and his alleged accomplices have already been arrested by Indian police on charges of murdering Mr Shah.

Separatist leaders from various Kashmiri groups, who had formed a panel to probe Mr Shah’s death, gave the LeT report to the media on Friday.

It marked the first time since the start of the militancy in 1989 that any militant group has released a report into the killing of a high-profile Kashmiri.

The report said Munshi believed that all Kashmir separatist leaders were working closely with Indian authorities and did not merit LeT’s support.

In Srinagars main jail, Munshi confided to another imprisoned militant, Imran, that he had killed Mr Shah and that “Muhammad Yasin Malik and other leaders” would be targeted next, the Lashkar report said.

Mr Malik heads the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front group and was a close friend of Mr Shah.

Lashkar also said Mr Munshi was a “double agent” and suggested he had helped the Indian army in its anti-separatist fight. The report noted Indian police twice freed Munshi in the past despite recovering deadly explosives from him.—Agencies