By IANS,
Jammu : Three terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) hailing from Pakistan, including one armyman, who were planning a suicide attack in this winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, have been arrested, police said Tuesday. A hunt was on to nab their four fellow terrorists in the Kashmir Valley.
“Three terrorists of the JeM went from Karachi to Dhaka and to Kolkata and from there they came to Jammu Dec 20. On specific information, we arrested them from the Samrat hotel in Jammu on Sunday,” state Director General of Police Kuldeep Khoda said at a press conference here.
“One of the three has been identified as Ghulam Farid alias Gulshan Kumar, a sepoy in 10 Azad Kashmir regiment of Pakistan Army. His service number is 4319184,” Khoda said.
The three terrorists – identified as Mohammad Imran, Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Farid who were on a suicide mission in Jammu and now in custody of the police – had disclosed that they were part of a group of seven, the police chief said.
“According to them (three terrorists), four JeM terrorists might have sneaked into the valley. We are on the lookout for them,” Khoda said.
Authorities have enforced a curfew-like situation in Srinagar, where polling would be held Wednesday for eight seats in the seventh and last phase of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections.
The police officer said that Farid joined the Pakistan Army in 2001 and was detailed for terrorist activities in 2005. Hailing from Bhimber in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Farid was associated with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), a pan-Islamic terrorist group, before joining the army, said Khoda.
He was arrested along with other terrorists – Mohammad Abdullah belonging to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and Mohammed Imran, who hails from Dera Nawab in Bahawalpur.
Khoda said the three were trained and indoctrinated in Pakistan to carry out terror attacks in the city like the strike in Mumbai Nov 26.
He added that their plans to execute their deadly plan was delayed because of a delay in the arrival of their contact from the Kashmir Valley, who was to give them weapons. The Kashmiri contact was also to deliver them an explosives-laden vehicle.
Their contact could not come from the Valley due to the closure of Srinagar-Jammu national highway Sunday, the official said.
“These three had come to Jammu and they were to meet a guide, who was to come from the Kashmir Valley to Jammu and provide them weapons for specific targetting. We will know the target after interrogation,” Khoda said.
He added that preliminary interrogations have revealed the three have received specialised training in suicide attacks and driving explosives-laden vehicles.
Khoda said that Mohammad Abdullah and Mohammad Imran had booked rooms in the Samrat hotel Dec 21 under fake names of Akhilesh Prasad and Inder Prakash, respectively. The official added that they were trained by Mufti Abdul Rauf, brother of JeM founder Masood Azhar.
Arrested in India for holding a false passport, Azhar was among the militants exchanged for passengers of an Indian Airlines flight that was hijacked to Kandahar in December 1999. Rauf had arranged for their fake passports and visa.
The three stayed in a hotel near the railway station when they reached Dec 20 and they shifted to Samrat hotel the next day on the instructions from their handlers, Khoda said.