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From Lahore to Kashmir to a hair-transplant clinic: How a terrorist switched aims to fight baldness instead
During interrogation, Usman Jatt ‘Chinese’ allegedly said life in Kashmir bore no resemblance to picture painted at terrorist training camps across the border.
A Pakistani man allegedly sent to Jammu and Kashmir to set up sleeper cells and execute attacks for the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) ended up doing something may not really have put on his task list — getting a hair transplant in Srinagar.
According to interrogators, Mohammed Usman Jatt, alias ‘Chinese’, a trained LeT operative from Lahore, crossed the border into the Kashmir valley with instructions to carry out a series of attacks. What followed, if his alleged account to investigators is believed, was a mission that gradually unravelled into something far more personal.
Usman Jatt was arrested in early April by Srinagar Police alongside Abdullah, alias Abu Hureira, who was described as the longest-surviving LeT terrorist. The case has since been handed to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
During interrogation, Usman Jatt ‘Chinese’ allegedly said life in Kashmir bore no resemblance to the picture painted at terrorist training camps across the border.
He told investigators his objectives shifted after witnessing the reality of daily life in the valley.
Jatt said he suffered from severe hair loss for years and this significantly dented his self-esteem, as per unnamed interrogators quoted by news agency PTI. He is said to have assumed hair restoration was a luxury accessible only in the West.
This changed after he was introduced, through a fellow Pakistani terrorist called Zargam, to a Srinagar shopowner who turned out to be a trusted contact within the Over Ground Worker (OGW) network, sources in the police told PTI.
Since this shopkeeper had himself undergone a hair transplant, Jatt reportedly spent time persuading him to help him access the procedure.
According to investigators, he was eventually taken to a clinic in the city, where the treatment required multiple visits, including overnight stays.
Based on information provided during interrogation, Srinagar Police sources said they were were able to dismantle an entire OGW network operating across North Kashmir and Srinagar city.
After the procedure was complete, investigators said, Jatt took a passenger vehicle to Jammu, then a sleeper bus to Punjab, eventually reaching Malerkotla, where he reportedly passed his time watching Turkish television serials and trying to learn English.
He told interrogators he had ambitions of obtaining an Aadhaar card, PAN card, and eventually a passport to flee India, following the trail of another infiltrator who had successfully escaped using forged documents and is now believed to be somewhere in the Gulf.
