The Lashkar-e-Taiba’s top ranking militant Qari Naveed alias Fahadullah of Multan, Pakistan, has revealed how his organisation planned to eliminate the then Inspector-General Police of Kashmir Shiv Murari Sahai in a fidayeen attack at his office in 2012.
Arrested at Sopore in northern Kashmir on April 17, the LeT “divisional commander” is understood to have told his interrogators that the Pakistan-based conglomerate of Kashmir-specific militant groups, the Muttahida Jihad Council, had decided to eliminate the senior IPS officer for his success in crushing the Valley’s street turmoil in 2010. The fidayeen attack was assigned to the LeT.
Now an Additional Director-General, Mr. Sahai took over as IGP, Kashmir, in the thick of the street demonstrations in 2010. His efforts at demolishing a well-knit network of militants and groups of stone-throwing youth were hailed at the national level. Quite a number of militants, as also the people who orchestrated the violent demonstrations, had developed contacts with certain mainstream politicians and police officers when Mr. Sahai assumed office.
Fahadullah is said to have revealed that the LeT had given the key responsibility of the operation to Muzamil Amin Dar alias Urfi alias Hasham of Sopore. Two of the highly indoctrinated Pakistani cadres, Abdullah Shaheen and Moosa, were placed at his disposal after they had completed an advanced training course followed by Doura-e-Khaas in the LeT’s main camp in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.
Muzamil went into hiding a day after his associate Ehtesham Malik was arrested by the Delhi Police on February 28, 2012. Now in the Tihar Jail, Ehtesham is facing charges of planning some terrorist operations. He was detained while allegedly planning attacks on a hotel at Chandni Chowk in Delhi and the State Bank of India complex in Srinagar with the help of Muzamil. Officials insist that Muzamil had a hand in the September 7, 2011 Delhi High Court blasts, in which 11 people died and scores were wounded.
After his surrender in Sopore in 2007, Ehtesham stayed in his parents’ house in Jharkhand. His mother was from Hazaribagh. In 2011, he managed to get a passport on his Hazaribagh address. On Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s recommendation, he got a Pakistani visa and returned to India after attending the LeT training course in PoK.
Fahadullah’s disclosures, accessed by The Hindu , indicate that Muzamil carried out a reconnaissance of the Kashmir IGP’s office in September 2012. He shot a detailed video and took pictures. According to the plan, Abdullah Shaheen and Moosa would follow Mr. Sahai’s motorcade in police uniform and enter the fortified complex on his arrival.
They would strike down their prime target and continue firing till their own ‘martyrdom”.
However, Muzamil as well as Shaheen got killed in an encounter with the police and the Army on October 22, 2012, in Sopore’s Shallapora neighbourhood. Moosa died in another encounter in Kulgam district in December.
