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Pulwama mastermind Ammar designated a terrorist under UAPA
Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir, alias Ammar Alvi, mastermind of the Pulwama attack on February 14, 2019, and brother of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, has been declared an “individual terrorist” by India under the UAPA.
Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir, alias Ammar Alvi, mastermind of the Pulwama attack on February 14, 2019, and brother of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, has been declared an “individual terrorist” by India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, or UAPA.
Alvi, 39, a resident of Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province, was involved in 2019 Pulwama suicide attack in which 40 personnel of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed, the home ministry said in a notification on Monday.
“Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir alias Alvi is involved in anti-India terror activities on behalf of Jaish-e-Mohammad,” the home ministry said. “He looks after JeM’s fund collection activities from Pakistani nationals and routing the said fund to Kashmir in India.”
Alvi has also been involved in facilitating infiltration of Afghan cadres and coordinating terror attacks on Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, the ministry added.
Alvi, who also goes by the moniker Chota Masood, has already been charge sheeted along with brothers Azhar and Abdul Rauf Asghar, nephew Umar Farooq, who was sent to Kashmir to execute the Pulwama attack, and 15 others in August 2020 by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Farooq was sent to India in April 2018 to supervise the Pulwama attack, which triggered the Indian Air Force (IAF) action against a Jaish terror camp deep inside Pakistan 12 days later, and resulted in a dogfight between fighter jets of the two nations on February 27. He was killed in a gunfight on March 29, one and a half month after the Pulwama terror incident.
It was Alvi and his elder brother Rauf Asghar who were constantly guiding Farooq on the Pulwama conspiracy from Pakistan over the phone, investigators said. Both Alvi and Asghar share operational command of JeM’s operations in India, according to a government official.
In fact, the NIA recovered some chats from Farooq’s phone during the investigation in which Alvi, on the directions of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency, asked his nephew about Indian Air Force’s bases from where jets were being scrambled.
An Interpol red notice has been issued against Alvi and other JeM leaders based in Pakistan, but the neighbouring nation is yet to take any action against them.
Alvi’s designation under UAPA comes two days after Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed’s son Talha Saeed was designated as a terrorist by the Centre.
The Centre has powers to designate a person as individual terrorist under the fourth schedule of the UAPA, if it believes that he or she is involved in terrorism. The provision was included in the law through an amendment in August 2019.
“Once a person is designated as individual terrorist, agencies such as the NIA can put an embargo on arms, funds and seize the assets of such persons,” said a government official, requesting anonymity.
