A day after Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists attacked Border Security Force jawans in Kashmir, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar on Tuesday summoned Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Basit to his office in South Block and issued a strongly-worded demarche over Pakistan’s policy to provide continued support to cross-border terrorism and fuelling unrest in the Valley.
While giving examples of Pakistani hand in creating disturbance in India, Jaishankar made a specific reference to lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorist and Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, who was captured recently during an encounter in Kashmir. Radicalised by Jamat-ud-Dawa and its chief Hafiz Saeed, Ali was infiltrated along with several other terrorists. He was instructed to take advantage of the ongoing agitation in Kashmir and attack security forces and police from the crowd to fuel the unrest.
“Jaishankar called in the Pakistan envoy and issued a strong demarche on continuing cross border terrorism from Pakistan. Demarche made specific reference to leT terrorist and Pak national Bahadur Ali who was apprehended recently,” said External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup.
last year two Pakistan based terrorists — Naveed and Sajjad — were arrested by Indian security forces. This year, prior to Ali, security forces nabbed top Pak leT terrorist Ukasha, alias Hanzullah in Kupwara.
All these terrorists have given their addresses in Pakistan. Pakistan has been in a denial mode over involvement of its citizens in terror activities in India. However, Ali, in a letter addressed to the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi has sought legal aid and assistance to meet his family. India has agreed to grant Pakistani High Commission consular access to Ali.
Twenty-year old Bahadur Ali, alias Abu Saifullah, is a resident of Jia Bagga village in lahore. He was arrested by Indian security forces in J&K on July 25 with AK-47 rifle, live rounds, grenades, grenade launcher and sophisticated communication equipment and other material of Pakistani/international origin. Jaishankar told Basit that Ali has confessed to Indian authorities about his training in leT camps in Pakistan.
“Ali has confessed to our authorities that after training in leT camps, he was infiltrated into India. He was thereafter in touch with an ‘operations room’ of leT, receiving instructions to attack Indian security personnel and carry out other terrorist attacks in India,” the demarche said while adding: “Government of India strongly protests against the continued infiltration from Pakistan of trained terrorists with instructions to carry out attacks. This is contrary to assurances given by the Pakistani leaders at the highest level.”
It is learnt that during Ali’s stay in lahore, he came into contact with one member of JuD, who used to visit his village and its Ah-le-Hadith Mosque for JuD’s funds collection. This man assigned Ali the task of collection of funds from his locality and started motivating him to join the leT for waging jehad in India. Another leT member, Moulana Abdur Rahim, too brainwashed Ali and several other youth of his village by showing them video lectures and messages of Hafiz Saeed appealing youths to go for jehad in India and establish Islamic rule there. Ali, reportedly, confessed that Taqreers of Moulvi Yusuf Asroori of Jamat-ud-Dawa and Molvi Khalid Islam Watoo, which undertake propaganda against India, were also responsible for his radicalisation besides videos put out by Asiya Andrabi (Head of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, J&K), too influenced him.
After three rounds of training in leT camps, Ali was infiltrated into India along with others in June 2016. Before being infiltrated, they were repeatedly shown videos of Hafiz Saeed in which he gave Taqreers of the “ultimate importance of waging Jihad and attaining Shahadat.” According to the statement given by Ali, whenever he used to have doubts whether to go for Shahadat or not, he “would listen to Saeed’s speeches and videos of jehad against India.”
Ali told security forces that after infiltrating into India, he continuously changed his locations and kept in touch with his control centre, code named Alpha 3, located in Pakistan who then gave him further instructions to the next Grid Reference (GR) code/location.