Police keeping tab on Pak handler of Hizbul Mujahideen

The Delhi police’s Special Cell, which nabbed two suspected terrorists of Pakistan-sponsored HM on Thursday, has put the activities of their Pakistani handler known only as Shaheed under its radar.

The Delhi police’s Special Cell, which nabbed two suspected terrorists of Pakistan-sponsored Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) on Thursday, has put the activities of their Pakistani handler known only as Shaheed under its radar.

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“We have managed to located Shaheed, who is a Pakistani national and had assembled the two-member Hizbul Mujahideen team. He was to instruct them about specifics of the target/s in Delhi on or before Independence Day,” said a Delhi police officer, who was part of the operation that led to the arrests of the suspects — Javed Ahmad and Ashiq Ali Bhat, both from Jammu & Kashmir.

While declining to give specifics on how the authorities are keeping a tab on Shaheed, owing to sensitive nature of the ongoing operation, the officer said, “We are hopeful about mopping up other members of the terror module in time.”

According to a source in the Ministry of Home Affairs, “human as well as technical intelligence led to the busting of the HM module.”

The Delhi police have already got in touch with Jammu and Kashmir police to track down a key Shaheed aide known to the arrested HM duo as Faiyyaz, he said.

The source added that Faiyyaz had reportedly dispatched the two from that state to Delhi with a stolen Hyundai Santro and weapons including two AK-47s and hand grenades.

The Hizbul Mujahideen’s aborted terror mission, said a senior Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, who didn’t wish to be named, as he is not authorised to talk, was allegedly planned by the group’s Pakistan-based chief Syed Salahuddin and its handlers in the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) to “put the focus back on Kashmir”.