The National Investigation Agency (NIA) says it has made a breakthrough in the 2016 case of the Nagrota Army camp attack in which seven soldiers were killed by three Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists.
The NIA took the custody of Muneer-ul-Hassan Qadri, an alleged JeM operative, from the Jammu and Kashmir police on Saturday.
Qadri, who had been in the custody of the police for some time after returning from Nepal recently, had informed interrogators of his role in terror modules, including the group involved in the Nagrota attack.
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An NIA spokesperson said Qadri, a resident of Lolab in Kupwara, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the attack on the Army camp on November 29, 2016.
Three Pakistani terrorists were killed in the operation and a huge quantity of firearms, ammunition, and explosives were seized.
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Well-planned conspiracy
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Preliminary interrogation of the accused revealed that the attack was carried out by the JeM as part of a well-planned conspiracy hatched in Pakistan, the spokesperson said.
The accused is said to have told the interrogators that he and other JeM operatives in the Kashmir Valley were in touch with the JeM leadership in Pakistan and received a freshly infiltrated group of three Pakistani terrorists from the Samba sector a day before the attack.
They stayed at a hotel in Jammu and then left the attackers outside the Army camp in Nagrota late at night before proceeding to the Valley, the agency spokesperson said.
In the early hours of November 29, a group of heavily armed terrorists, dressed in police uniform, attacked an Army unit, located three km from the Corps Headquarters at Nagrota.
The recoveries made from the attackers pointed to the role of the JeM’s Al-Shohada Brigade, or Shaheed Afzal Guru Squad, formed in 2013.
Two pages bearing some text in the Urdu script were found at the site, near the bodies of the militants.