Terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is recruiting “vulnerable young men in Pakistan,” as part of a larger conspiracy to wage war against India, especially in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, a chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the Udhampur terrorist attack case has said.
The NIA said the LeT “recruited these impressionable young men and put them through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their worldview and providing them with ‘military’ skills and they were then illegally pushed into India to join their colleagues and commit terrorist acts.”
The outfit recruited “guides” to help “trained terrorists” infiltrate into India through Helen Det — a launch pad being operated by the outfit in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) near the Line of Control (LoC), says the chargesheet pertaining to the attack on a BSF bus in Udhampur in J&K last year when two jawans were killed and 13 were injured.
To establish that the terrorists who infiltrated into India were Pakistanis, the NIA has mentioned the address of the captured infiltrator Mohammad Naveed in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Naveed is one of the two attackers who opened fire on the BSF bus and arrested later on.
Before the attack, a Pulwama resident, Khursheed Ittu (36), along with his wife and infant child, escorted the truck carrying the terrorists in his personal Maruti Alto car to the spot where the incident took place. Ittu had received instructions from Abu Qasim, the LeT commander in South Kashmir.
NIA has said the LeT trained terrorists who entered India in a group of four were asked to reach a “pre-determined tree” in Baramullah district and tie a piece of cloth to announce their arrival. The accused reached the tree with the help of a GPS device, the coordinates of which were fed by a local contact.
NIA seized “skin of bananas” consumed by main accused Naveed from the near tree as evidence to prove that he stayed there on June 7, 2015, days after the group entered India on May 21.
“The investigation has also revealed the existence of a network of supporters and terrorists of the LeT, who provided transport and logistic facilities to and his associates after they had infiltrated into India,” the chargesheet filed by NIA said.
Two more men who infiltrated with them were identified as Mohammad Bhai and Abu Okasha are still absconding.
“The investigation has established that the infiltrating party were each handed an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, a wireless set, a compass, a GPS set, one map, two grenades and six filled magazines of AK-47 rifles before the party set out towards the LoC,” the chargesheet said.
The NIA has also unearthed a hideout of the LeT militants built by scooping out a portion at the slope of a hill near Wuyan in Pulwama district. “The roof of the hideout was put together by putting corrugated tin sheets on a frame made from logs of wood. The description and nature of items recovered from the hideout are such that they are in the ordinary course likely to be used by terrorists (GPS sets, binoculars, night vision device, wireless sets etc.). Further, the Pakistani origin of the medicines recovered from the hideout clearly establishes the fact that the terrorists who had used the hideout had linkages with Pakistan. Three GPS sets, two mobile phones seized from the hideout were forwarded for forensic analysis and extraction of data…it contains several videos, photographs and text which clearly shows the intimate linkage of the person or persons who used the phone with terrorism,” said the chargesheet.
The chargesheet has been filed against a total of nine persons.
