The Hindu : Asghar Ali pulled the trigger: CBI Director

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 19, 2003

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Asghar Ali pulled the trigger: CBI Director

By Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI APRIL 18. The four persons apprehended by the Central Bureau of Investigation for last month's killing of the former Gujarat Home Minister and senior BJP leader, Haren Pandya, had "unmistakable links" with the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan and the "conspiracy" could well turn out to have a "much deeper with wider ramifications".

Addressing a crowded press conference at the agency's headquarters here today, the CBI Director, P.C. Sharma, said the prime suspect Asghar Ali (29) was the one who had actually "pulled the trigger" and killed Pandya.

The CBI has also arrested Mohammed Abdul Bari, Abdul Rauf and Mohammed Iftekar. The four are alleged to have done a recce of the route usually taken by Pandya for his morning walk as well as his usual movements before zeroing in on him. The agency has time till March 21 to interrogate the suspects.

Though he refused to go into the specifics of the investigation, Mr. Sharma claimed that Ali had been to Pakistan more than once for training to handle weapons and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). He said that Ali had also visited Jammu and Kashmir and made contacts with militants. "The interrogation was likely to throw more light on this aspect. "We still do not know with certainty the names of militant outfits with whom Ali was said to have met," he said.

The agency still appears to be piecing together the evidence and plugging the loopholes while reconstructing the sequence of events that led to the murder of Haren Pandya on March 26.

Yet another person, Mohammad Shafi, has also been picked up from Hyderabad and the agency suspects him, along with Asghar Ali, to be behind the shooting of a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, Jagdish Tiwari, in Ahmedabad on March 11. Mr. Tiwari had escaped with two bullet wounds.After investigation in the Pandya murder was handed over to the CBI just two days after the crime, it was groping in the dark till April 9. The scene of crime was visited by the CBI Director and the Special Director, U.S. Mishra, who supervised the probe by a 10-member crack team.

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