The Delhi Police Special Cell has arrested Zafar Masood alias Guddu for allegedly funding al-Qaeda's Indian sub-continent (AQIS) operatives for crossing over to Pakistan. With this, the total number of arrests in the case moves to three. Earlier, the Delhi Police had arrested Mohammed Asif and Abdul Rahman, who runs a madrasa in Odisha’s Cuttack.
On Masood’s engagement with AQIS, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said that he had paid nearly Rs. one lakh ($500) in two instalments arranging the trip of his own nephew Serjil (22) and Asif to Pakistan where they received training at an al-Qaeda camp in the AfPak region. Serjil continues to be in Pakistan.
Serjil and Asif along with, a Delhi resident Rehan (26) had gone to Pakistan via Tehran and Afghanistan in June 2013 for training where they found one Omar Hyderabadi who takes his surname after his native city. Barring Asif, all three are still suspected to be in Pakistan.
It is learnt that Masood had last heard of his nephew in August 2015 from Rehan’s mother who was in regular touch with her son via e-mail.
But evidence and confessions that have come up point to Masood’s engagement with alleged terrorist groups based in Pakistan began much before Asif and Rahman’s journey to the AfPak region. Massod had trained with Harkat-Ul-Mujahidin (HuM) as early as in the nineties.
“He claims that in his formative years in Sambhal, he and Maulana Asim Umar, the amir of AQIS chosen by al-Qaeda head Ayman Al Zawahiri, were best friends and the latter had started sowing the seeds of radicalisation in Masood,” said a police source.
In between, Masood completed a refrigeration course in Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi where he befriended Usman. He even worked in Riyadh as a technician coming back to India in 1998, said the police.
The source added that soon after the Delhi-Lahore bus service was launched in 1999, he and Usman went to Lahore and from there went on to join HuM camps in Mansehra which is in the Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
“It was also there that the duo met Qasim (code name), a deputy of Maulana Asim Umar, and also an original resident of Sambhal. However, Masood and Usman returned to India but in 2012, Usman went back,” said a source.
But all these years Masood had frequently kept in contact with Maulana Asim Umar, who directed him to stay in touch with Qasim and Usman, sources added.
Though Masood and Asif were neighbours, for their alleged AQIS activities, Serjil was the connecting link.
