ISI pushed Jaish for intel on IAF bases
Azhar, 18 others named for planning, executing attack
NEW DELHI: Around the time New Delhi and Islamabad scrambled fighter jets at their borders following India’s airstrike on a terror camp in Balakot in February last year, Pakistani spy agency Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) asked Jaish-e-mohammed (JEM) operatives in Jammu and Kashmir to find out and pass on information on the location of Indian Air Force (IAF) bases, according to a charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the Pulwama terror attack case on Tuesday.
The audacious February 14 strike by the Jaish in southern Kashmir’s Pulwama killed 40 Indian security personnel, triggered the IAF action against the terror camp deep inside Pakistan 12 days later, resulted in a dogfight between fighter jets of the two nations on February 27, and brought them on the brink of a war.
In its 13,500-page charge sheet filed in a special NIA court in Jammu, NIA named 19 people, including Jaish leader Masood Azhar and four of his relatives, for planning and carrying out the attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy at the behest of Pakistan.
Of the 19, six are dead, three are absconding, and seven have been arrested. Azhar and his two brothers are believed to be in Pakistan.
As per charge sheet, Azhar’s 24-year-old nephew Mohammad Umar Farooq was sent to Kashmir in 2018 to execute the bombing. Farooq, who was killed in an encounter by security forces on March 29, 2019, was in constant touch with Azhar’s brothers Abdul Rouf Asghar Alvi and Ammar Alvi, and received directions from them before, during and after the attack, the charge sheet said. It also included transcripts of the chats between them.
Alvi told Farooq, the key figure behind the blasts, during one of these chats after the Balakot strike that ISI wanted Jaish operatives on the Indian side to find out about IAF’S bases from where the fighter jets were being scrambled, said an official.
NEWDELHI: Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, sought to create a nongovernment organisation (NGO) parallel to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) because of a perception that Kashmiris had lost faith in the latter , according to a charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in July against Davinder Singh, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), J&K Police, and four others.
ISI authorities delegated the job to Irfan Shafi Mir, 31, a lawyer from Kashmir, who was trusted by both the Pakistani establishment and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), the primary terrorist group in the Valley, the charge sheet says.
According to the charge sheet, a copy of which has been reviewed by HT, the Central anti-terror probe agency has named at least six ISI officials – Umar Cheema, Eshan Chaudhary, Faizal, Sohail Abbas, Arbaaz and Sheikh Sahab – who were in touch with Mir.
Shafkat Jatoi alias Hussain, a Pakistani high commission official, who was repatriated from New Delhi to Islamabad in June for allegedly engaging in anti-india activities, paid Rs 2.5 lakh to Mir in two instalments to organise two seminars to fuel separatist sentiment -- How to defend Article 370, and Violation of Human Rights in the Kashmir Valley -- the charge sheet said.
These seminars were allegedly chaired by Hameeda Bano, an academician based in Kashmir and the wife of the separatist activist Nayeem Khan, who was charged in 2017 in the NIA’S Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) terror funding case, it added.
Professor Bano, however, denied that she chaired these seminars. “It’s a white lie. I have not attended any such seminar”.
Mir is alleged to be the key person in the conspiracy to revive HM’S activities in the Valley; he used to regularly visit the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi “to receive instructions and money, and also facilitated the (Pakistani) visa applications for a number of Kashmiris,” according to the chargesheet.
He was arrested along with Davinder Singh, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), J&K Police, and two HM terrorists – Syed Naveed Mushtaq alias Naveed Babu and Rafi Ahmad Rather -- on January 11 in Shopian, south Kashmir. Davinder Singh was suspended from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police after he was arrested while ferrying the two HM terrorists in a vehicle on the Srinagar-jammu Highway.
APHC, an alliance of 26 political, social and religious organisations from Kashmir, was formed in March 1993 as a united front to raise the cause of Kashmiri separatism, but has been ineffective in Kashmir for over the past two years. APHC’S leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani , 90, the face of Kashmir’s separatist movement for over three decades, resigned in June.
The NIA charge sheet stated that Mir has known senior ISI operatives since 2016 through a person identified as Majeed, who invited him to Pakistan to meet the HM leadership.
During his 10-day trip to Pakistan four years ago, Mir met HM chief Syed Salahuddin, Khurshid Alam, Najar Mahmood, who are HM’S operations and finance heads, respectively, among others.in 2018, he made two trips – in February and September– to Pakistan, during which he was instructed by Alam to find a contact in West Asia, preferably in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for obtaining funds transferred through hawala channels for keeping terror activities alive in Kashmir, the charge sheet said.