Reel to real: Kashmiri teen who cameoed in film Haider turned militant, shot dead in encounter

15-year-old Saqib Bilal faced a tragic end, four years after he acted in the film ‘Haider’. According to Hindustan Times, Saqib was a theatre artist before he left his home in Hajin area of north Kashmir’s Bandipora along with another boy, identified as Mudasir Parray, in the month of August.

Saqib and his friend Mudasir Parray went missing from their home in Bandipora district’s Hajin on August 31 and joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba. They were killed on Sunday after an 18-hour-long gunbattle on the outskirts of Srinagar city, along with a Pakistani militant commander, Ali Bhai.

Police officials told Hindustan Times that the two teenagers joined militants immediately after they disappeared.

Bilal had cleared his Class 10 with a distinction and was studying physics, chemistry and maths in Class 11. He was a football aficionado and had even played taekwondo and kabaddi. The other boy belonged to a poor family and Saqib came from a well to do farming family.

“He wanted to be an engineer. He loved football and acting,” his father Bilal Ahmad Sheikh told News18. “He would never talk about militancy or the conflict. His life was filled with his own adventures.”

Talking to the daily, Saqib’s maternal uncle, Asim Aijaz, said the teen was studying in Class 6 when he acted in Haider. In the film, he could be spotted in two brief shots