The Hindu : New Delhi News : Atif’s laptop decoded; data retrieved

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Thursday, Sep 25, 2008
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New Delhi

Atif’s laptop decoded; data retrieved

Devesh K. Pandey

Second mobile seized from the Batla House flat also cracked

Indian Mujahideen run jointly by Atif and Saddik
Delhi team to join Mumbai police in questioning

NEW DELHI: The Delhi police have come across about 80 e-mail addresses stored in laptops belonging to suspected Indian Mujahideen militant Mohammad Bashir alias Atif, who was gunned down in an encounter with the Special Cell at Batla House here this past week. They also found that the outfit was operating at the instance of an underworld figure having links with Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

A team of cyber experts has been working on the laptops for the past couple of days to retrieve their contents. The experts have also managed to crack the second mobile phone seized from the Batla House flat and found some video clips including one of a bomb being planted at Children’s Park near India Gate.

Another video clip pertains to the Ahmedabad blasts and the third appears to be of a bomb planted at Greater Kailash. However, the police are trying to verify the third clip. It took a lot of effort to open the files as they had been blocked using passwords.

The police said findings have now been corroborated by the operation carried out by their Mumbai counterpart in which five alleged Indian Mujahideen militants, including its founder member Mohammad Saddik Shaikh, were arrested.

Investigations have revealed the outfit was being run jointly by Atif and Saddik who reported to Roshan Khan, who was involved in criminal activities including smuggling of counterfeit currency. The police suspect that Roshan Khan alias Riaz also had links with the Pakistan-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

Roshan Khan reported to Amir Raza Khan, the brother of Asif Raza Khan — a key member of the Aftab Ansari gang — who was gunned down in an encounter with the Rajkot police about seven years ago. Amir had then managed to escape to Dubai. To avenge his brother’s killing, Amir, along with the militants of LeT and Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami, allegedly masterminded an attack at the American Center in Kolkata in 2002.

The police have found that Amir, who is now based in Pakistan, has been reporting to the LeT head of operations, Abu Alqama. “Based on these findings, we had said that the recent attacks were being carried out at the behest of LeT,” said a police officer.

A Delhi Police team will join the interrogation of the five suspected militants arrested by the Mumbai police.

Meanwhile, the colleagues of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, who died fighting suspected militants at Batla House this past week, organised a condolence meeting here on Wednesday to pay homage to the brave officer. Joint Commissioner of Police Karnal Singh and Deputy Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar were present on the occasion.

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