Kasab II. A young Pakistani jehadi earned this nickname after he was dramatically overpowered by his hostages while trying to escape a manhunt launched by security forces soon after he and an accomplice gunned down two BSF jawans and wounded 11 others on Wednesday.
One militant was neutralised by the sentry present in the attacked bus. Official sources in New Delhi identified the ultra as Mohammed Naved Yakub, son of Mohammed Yakub from Faisalabad in Pakistan.
Naved’s arrest has given India solid proof about the neighbouring country’s involvement in the recent spurt in terror attacks in Jammu & Kashmir. His interrogation will give Intelligence agencies vital information on terror camps across the border and the number of infiltrators waiting to enter India.
Naved and his accomplice breached tight security cover to mount an audacious strike on a BSF convoy near Narsu Nallah in Samroli area along the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Udhampur district, 80 km from Jammu. The stunning terror attack had all the imprints of an operation by Pakistan-based lashker-e- Tayyeba (leT) and later in the day Naved also confessed that he had undergone two types of training with the terror group.
Inspector-General of BSF, Jammu frontier, Rakesh Sharma told reporters at the encounter site: “The BSF convoy was attacked by heavily-armed militants around 7.15 am in which two BSF jawans attained martyrdom while 11 others were injured.”
He said an alert sentry on board the bus neutralised one heavily-armed militant while another escaped into the mountains. According to eyewitness reports, the two militants, one of them dressed in Army fatigues appeared in front of the BSF bus ferrying jawans to Kashmir Valley and fired indiscriminately after lobbing a grenade around 7.15 am.
As one of the terrorists tried to enter the bus, the sentry present on board shot him while another militant ran for cover towards the thickly-forested area and scaled Samroli heights.
Eyewitnesses said that while escaping from the encounter site he took Village Defence Committee (VDC) members Rakesh Kumar and Vikramjit as hostages and directed them to take him to a safe location.
Since both of them were trained VDC members, they kept their cool and showed presence of mind while agreeing to the demands of the Pakistani militant.
later, narrating the entire episode, Rakesh Kumar told reporters: “The jehadi got tired after trekking for 4 kms and stopped for a while to rest. He demanded food and we arranged some from a nearby eatery. While he was eating, police (who had been tipped-off by the VDC) arrived on the scene and he became nervous. Emboldened by the presence of the police we pinned him down. One of us caught hold of his neck and the other snatched his gun.”
“He begged us to let him go instead of handing him over to the police,” Vikramjit Singh said.
After carrying out preliminary investigations in Udhampur, the Pakistani national was escorted to Jammu where a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) is expected to interrogate him.