The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a charge sheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, an alleged member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), for allegedly planning to carry out terror activities in various parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi. Ali was arrested on July 24 last year from the border village of Yahama village in north Kashmir.
The charge sheet has also highlighted the gaps along the Line of Control (LoC) as Ali and two other terrorists had been walking for seven days undetected before they reached their destination. The trio had entered India in the intervening night of June 12 -13, 2016 and reached their destination only around June 20.
The charge sheet was filed before District Judge Amar Nath here as the NIA had registered a case against Ali.
According to the NIA charge sheet, investigations have established that Ali, a school dropout and originally a resident of Jia Bagga village of Raiwind in Lahore, was also provided a map depicting parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). He was provided with the grid references (GRs) that had been recovered from his possession. Ali plotted these GRs on the map which was sent for examination to the Surveyor General of India at Dehradun which affirmed that the terrorist had plotted them correctly.
‘Trained in map use’
“This clearly establishes that Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject. A GPS device was recovered from Ali at the time of his arrest. The data retrieved from the GPS device contained coordinates of the Mandakuli ‘launching pad’ of LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in J&K, like Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur, besides Delhi,” the charge sheet said.
“Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns or cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including in Delhi,” the charge sheet said.
NIA also sought an opinion of General Examiner of Questioned Document (GEQD) who had confirmed his ability to plot GRs on the Google maps and on the topographic sheets after which the agency slapped the charge of waging war against the country on Ali.
Ali has been been in judicial custody since August.
‘Lashkar conspiracy’
NIA alleged that Ali was part of the conspiracy hatched by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a proscribed terrorist organisation, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India.
NIA said that as part of LeT’s plan, Ali alias Saifullah Mansoor, along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists, infiltrated into Indian territory equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.
Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, ‘Walid Bhai’ by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by LeT to avoid interception, it said. On June 22, the two left for getting some food from a village leaving Ali on a hill top. However, both were killed in an encounter and Ali shifted his base to another hillock “as a precautionary measure”.
Next day Ali contacted ‘Alfa-3’, the LeT control station based in PoK, who directed him to continue his journey and reach the final destination where he met his local contact who provided him food and shelter, it said.
