By IANS
Srinagar : A caller claiming to be the chief spokesperson of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Friday told a local daily that the outfit was probing the authenticity of a video CD purportedly issued by the Al-Qaeda terror group declaring holy war on India.
The caller, who identified himself as Abdullah Ghaznavi, chief spokesman of LeT, told the vernacular daily Alsafa News on phone: "We are investigating the genuineness of the CD. At present we have no means to deny its authenticity."
Gopal Sharma, state director general of police, told IANS: "We have taken cognisance of the CD. It is premature to comment on the veracity of the CD."
The VCD, sent to the local Current News Service, showed a lone masked man who called himself Abu Abdul Rehman Al Ansari and claimed to be the chief of Al-Qaeda in India.
"Al-Qaeda today declares 'jihad' against India and Jammu and Kashmir shall be the gateway for this jihad," the speaker said.
Syed Ali Geelani, chairman of the breakaway separatist Hurriyat, told IANS: "It is the handiwork of some intelligence agency that wants to defame our just struggle. I have no information about the Al-Qaeda presence in Kashmir. There is no scope for violence in our struggle which is peaceful and just."
The CD had threatened Geelani besides Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, chairman of the moderate Hurriyat group, Yasin Malik, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, former chief ministers Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Muhammad Sayeed.
The masked speaker had not even spared Syed Sallahuddin, supreme commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen and chief of the Muzaffarabad-based United Jihad Council (UJC), and Hafiz Muhammad Syed, chief of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), including both in the list of "traitors against Islam".
Yasin Malik in his reaction said, "I have said one year earlier that we would oppose any Al-Qaeda presence in Kashmir as that would earn us more enemies than sympathizers across the world. Though I have no means to confirm or deny the veracity of the CD."