Media claims that a Jammu and Kashmir resident held in Kishtwar earlier this week played a key role in the December,1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar are overblown, police and intelligence officials told The Hindu .
Mehrajuddin Dand, a resident of the north Kashmir town of Sopore, was held by the police on Monday. Family sources told The Hindu he returned to India last week, after spending several years in Pakistan and Nepal, following negotiations with local police officials. Hundreds of other former jihadists living in Pakistan have returned to the State in similar circumstances since 2006, mainly members of the largely ethnic-Kashmiri Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
“In the course of Mr. Dand’s questioning,” a highly-placed official said, “we came to believe he may have information related to individuals connected to the hijacking. Those claims are being verified. He is not a suspect in the actual hijacking.”
Director-General of Police Ashok Prasad and Kishtwar Superintendent of Police Bhim Singh Tooti did not respond to requests for comment.
Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandahar on Christmas eve in 1999 by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorists, seeking the release of their incarcerated commander, Masood Azhar Alvi. Indian authorities eventually released Mr. Alvi, along with British national Syed Umar Sheikh and Kashmiri jihadist Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar, in return for the safety of passengers on board the flight. Rupin Katyal, a passenger, was executed by the terrorists.
No role in plot
Police sources said their investigations are around Mr. Dand’s possible contacts with Arshad Cheema —an Inter-Services Intelligence-linked Pakistani diplomat who was expelled from Nepal in 2001 after authorities in that country found 16 kg of plastic explosive in his home. Mr. Cheema was spotted at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport on the morning of the hijacking.
However, charges filed by the Central Bureau of Investigations against the alleged hijackers in 2000 did not claim Mr. Cheema had a role in the hijacking. Nor do the prosecution’s documents suggest Mr. Dand —or any other Jammu and Kashmir resident — played any part in the operation.
The five alleged hijackers — Pakistani nationals Ibrahim Athar Alvi, Sunny Ahmad Qazi, Shahid Saeed Akhtar, ZahoorIbrahim Mistry and Farooa Abdul Aziz Siddiqui — were alleged to have planned the hijacking at a meeting in Bahawalpur in early 1999. Helped by a sixth Indian Harkat-ul-Mujahideen operative, Abdul Latif, the men obtained Indian passports and drivers’ licences from Mumbai-based travel agents and driving-instruction schools. The group then moved their weapons from Dhakato Kathmandu, travelling overland through India.
Indian authorities say all the five hijackers are living in Pakistan; three other men, two Indians and a Nepali, are serving prison terms. “The CBI has no reason to believe Mr. Dand was involved in the plot,” an official involved in the organisation said, “though we will be contacting the Jammu and Kashmir Police to see if there is any relevant new information now available.”
Few terror links
Multiple media accounts on Wednesday named Mr. Dand as a key terror commander, but documents seen by The Hindu show there is little evidence to bear out the claim. Mr. Dand is named as a terrorism suspect in a 2008 First Information Report registered in Sopore. He was not, however, sought in connection with any specific acts of violence. Earlier, in 1993, Mr. Dand had been held for a year under the State’s controversial preventive detention law, the Public Safety Act.
Police dossiers in Sopore record that Mr. Dand was among dozens of Jamaat-e-Islami youth who crossed the Line of Control in 1987 from the Sopore region — among them, the now-chief of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Muhammad Yusuf Shah. He was later believed to be in contact with jihadists in Pakistan andNepal.
“I’m a little surprised to see Mr. Dand described as a top terrorist,” the Jammu and Kashmir Police official said, “he wasn’t a top anything.”
