The Jammu and Kashmir State Investigation Agency achieved a major breakthrough on Monday as it filed a charge sheet against three Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists, including two operating from Pakistan, for coordinating terrorist and secessionist activities in J&K.
The charge sheet was filed in a case registered on November 7 last year.
This assumes importance in the context of the government’s strategy to identify Jammu and Kashmir residents who are hiding in Pakistan and coordinating terrorist and secessionist activities behind the scene from across the border, the officials said.
The SIA filed the charge sheet in a special NIA court against Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) terrorists Asif Shabir Naik, a resident of Kashtigarh in Doda, his father Shabir Hussain Naik alias Khalid Shabir, currently operating from Pakistan, and Safdar Hussain alias Ehsan of Marmat in Doda, who is also based in Pakistan.
According to the charge sheet, Asif Naik was intercepted at the Srinagar airport while he was trying to go back to Pakistan. There were intelligence inputs that he had been visiting Pakistan posing as a student studying there, the officials said. He was actually visiting terrorist and separatist training facilities there, suggested the intelligence inputs, the spokesman said.
While Asif Naik is in judicial custody, the other two — his father Shabir Naik and his associate Safdar Hussain — are hiding in Pakistan and have been designated absconders, he said. The SIA investigations have unearthed a story of a father, who crossed into Pakistan illegally, climbed the ladder of seniority in the Syed Sallauddin-led HM, and then became the media advisor looking after the propaganda cell of the terror outfit, the officials said.
The investigation revealed brazen and egregious misuse of travel documents by Pakistani agencies, the charge sheet said. In this case, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen with the “blessings” of Pakistani agencies gave the cover of studentship to Asif Naik. He used his stay in Pakistan to meet his father and also undergo training in sabotage and subversion, it said.
The SIA, which went into all aspect of the cross-border terror network of recruitments, said that the forensics of the Asif Naik’s phone devices showed that he had videographed army installations along the Baramula-Srinagar road. He had also photographed the access road to the airport and security features adjacent to it. The charge sheet said that while the visa on Asif Naik’s passport showed that he is a visitor, but immigration records indicated he was a student.
“Asif Naik’s interrogation in the context of the digital evidence revealed that Pakistan had arranged his admission at the International Islamic University in Islamabad in a mass communication programme as cover, and simultaneously facilitated his internship in the media cell of the HM run by his father”, the spokesman said. The investigation revealed that Asif Naik had completely concealed that his father was in Pakistan, a senior figure in the HM and close to Syed Sallauddin, he said.
He had falsely mentioned that he was visiting Pakistan to meet a relative, the charge sheet said. It said it is suspected that the objective of Asif Naik’s admission, as a student in a mass media course in Pakistan, was that he would to return to India as a journalist, clandestinely get embedded in the system and receive instructions on planning, coordinating and executing not only propaganda operations but separatist and even violent terrorist actions.
But for the videos in his cell phone the latter part of the adversary agenda would not have surfaced, the spokesman added.
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