NIA chargesheets suspected LeT operative

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national and suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) member Bahadur Ali alias Saifullah, who is accused of attempting to attack security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet was filed in a Patiala House court here under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosives Act, Arms Act and Foreigners Act, among other laws.

Ali, currently in judicial custody, was arrested on July 25, 2016, from a hideout in Yaham village in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir.

After his arrest, he led the police to a cache of arms and ammunitions buried in a nearby forest, the NIA said.

The chargesheet claimed that "Ali is a trained terrorist, practiced in the craft of reading maps using grid references and deft in communicating through wireless set by pairing mobile phone with it to avoid interception".

Along with two accomplices Abu Saad and Abu Darda, Ali infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control but subsequently on June 20 lost contact with the duowhen they went out looking for food. Abu Saad and Abu Darda were never caught.

"While crossing into India on the intervening night of June 12 and 13 last year, these terrorists were equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles," the NIA said in its chargesheet.

"These terrorists entered into Indian territory to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places in the country, as per the instructions given to them by their LeT handlers based in Pakistan or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)," it said.

A pocket diary allegedly seized from Ali revealed the names of places where he was instructed to carry out terror attacks -- Delhi, Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur.

At the time of his arrest, Ali was carrying "one compass, one ICOM wireless set, one matrix sheet bearing codes, two unicode sheets (handwritten pocket diary pages), bearing text written in coded form, Indian currency of Rs 23,000 (of which three notes were found to be fake), one GPS set and one map sheet".

Ali's instructors, meanwhile, informed him that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of militant Burhan Wani on July 8, 2016.

Kashmir plunged into disorder as hundreds of young men protested by hurling stones at the police and army personnel, the chargesheet said.

Ali was later instructed by the LeT to mix with the stone-pelting agitators and throw grenades at the Indian forces.

After his arrest, Ali allegedly revealed the location of another group of freshly infiltrated terrorists whom he was to receive.

"The information led to a search operation in Bandi Monabal area in Kashmir by state police and the army. Four unidentified terrorists were killed in retaliatory firing when they attacked a search team."

The NIA chargesheet said Ali was constantly in touch with Alfa-3 -- the LeT control station based in PoK.

Reacting to the development, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh said: "The perpetrators of terrorism cannot for long escape from the adverse outcomes of terrorism."

As for Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's threat of action against India, Singh said: "That kind of rhetoric is ultimately going to harm Pakistan more than India."

"As far as the evidence is concerned, the entire world now knows the epicentre of terrorism, at least in this part of Asia and in the Indian subcontinent, is none other than Pakistan," he added.