Pulwama terror attack, 2019
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Contents |
The investigation
The National Investigation Agency probe
August 25, 2020: The Times of India
Pulwama probe: NIA used DNA, other forensic tests to trace evidence that had 'blown to pieces'
NEW DELHI: When the National Investigation Agency (NIA) began its probe into the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed last year, it faced a “blind case” in the absence of any solid proof against the perpetrators.
The case posed unique challenges, such as a lot of evidence having blown to pieces in the suicide attack and seven accused being subsequently killed in encounters. However, the central agency used forensic tests including DNA profiling of the meagre evidence to breach the dead ends.
"It was a blind case for us. There were a lot of murmurs but everything needs to be established beyond doubt in the court of law," a senior official, who was part of the probe, said.
The first challenge was to establish the ownership of the car used by Adil Ahmad Dar, the suicide bomber, according to the chargesheet in the case filed by the NIA in a special court in Jammu on Tuesday.
There was nothing available from the vehicle which carried a cocktail of 200 kgs of high-grade explosives — RDX, Calcium-Ammonium Nitrate, Gelatin Sticks and Aluminium Powder.
As per the chargesheet, with the help of forensic methods and painstaking investigations, the serial number of the car that was blown into pieces beyond recognition was extracted and within no time the ownership of the vehicle was established - from the first to the last owner.
However, the last owner of the car, Sajjad Bhat (named in the chargesheet) of Bijbehara in Anantnag district, had disappeared hours before the February 14, 2019 attack and joined Jaish-e-Muhammed. He was subsequently killed in an encounter in June last year.
"While it was clear that the suicide attacker was Adil Ahmed Dar, the same had to be established with evidence. After picking up human remains from various spots, they were sent for DNA profiling," the official, who requested anonymity, said.
"The suicide attacker was identified and confirmed by matching the DNA extracted from the meagre car fragments with that of the DNA of his father," he said.
Moreover, seven accused wanted in the case by the NIA were killed during different encounters in 2019.
The chargesheet has named Mohammed Umar Farooq, the nephew of Jaish-e-Muhammed chief Masood Azhar, as the main conspirator of the suicide mission. According to officials, Farooq had infiltrated into India in April 2018 and was subsequently killed in one of the encounters in South Kashmir last year.
Officials said the role of conspirators which included Mudasir Ahmed Khan, Qari Mufti Yasser and Mohd Kamran came to light but all of them were killed in different encounters with security forces.
Khan was killed on March 10, Kamran on March 29, Sajjad Bhat on June 18 of last year while Qari Yasser was shot in an encounter on January 25 this year.
A team led by joint director of the NIA Anil Shukla gathered evidences and statements of terrorists and their sympathisers arrested in different cases in order to expose the conspiracy hatched for executing the audacious attack on the para-military convoy, officials said.
After JeM spokesperson Mohd Hassan in a video claimed that his group was responsible for the attack, it was sent for forensic examination and the Internet Protocol address was traced to a computer based in Pakistan.
“A lot of digital, forensic, documentary and oral evidence establishing a fool-proof case against the accused for this dastardly and barbaric attack has been collected," NIA Deputy Inspector General and spokesperson Sonia Narang said.
"The chargesheet has brought on record the all-out involvement of Pakistan-based entities to carry out terrorist strikes in India and to incite and provoke Kashmiri youth,” she said.
Culminating its 18-month long probe into the fatal terror attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead in South Kashmir last year, the NIA filed a chargesheet in a special court in Jammu against 19 people including Masood Azhar, the chief of banned terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed, for planning the suicide operation.
Giving details of the 13,500-page chargesheet, Narang said it marks the culmination of a year-and-a-half long "painstaking and meticulous investigation with valuable inputs received from other central and state government agencies as well as foreign law-enforcement agencies.”
Inputs from the FBI
Rohan Dua, August 27, 2020: The Times of India
FBI gave us key Pulwama probe inputs, says NIA
US intel and security service FBI helped India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) in its probe into the Pulwama terrorist attack with two key inputs — it identified the point person the handlers were in touch with and also the nature of explosives used in the blast, reports Rohan Dua.
“We are thankful for the valuable inputs received from… foreign law enforcement agencies, such as FBI, to nail the accused and weed out Pakistan’s designs to foment terrorism in J&K,” NIA spokesperson Sonia Narang told TOI on Wednesday.
In tracking of explosives, NIA got FBI’s help
The FBI had helped NIA crack the WhatsApp account run by a Jaishe-Muhammed (JeM) spokesperson who had been in touch with a core group involved in the Pulwama attack. The WhatsApp account on the Kashmir-based mobile phone was operated by Mohammad Hussain, traced to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan. But the number (which TOI is withholding) had been registered under the name of a woman from Budgam.
“The woman had died in 2011. And before that she lived in some other village in another district. Since it is not possible to trace WhatsApp and Facebook information of an account that operates outside India, FBI helped crack those,” a top NIA official told.
The FBI also helped NIA track down what explosives had been used in the Pulwama incident. “Ammonium nitrate, nitroglycerine and gelatin sticks. This was later confirmed by our own Central Forensic Science Laboratory team,” the official said. The cache had been brought in three consignments of 10-12 kg slabs in 2018 a year before the attack.
Rahul Pandita: How the case was solved
Neelam Raaj, June 20, 2021: The Times of India
From: Neelam Raaj, June 20, 2021: The Times of India
It had been six months since the Pulwama attack that killed 40 CRPF jawans on February 14, 2019, but Rakesh Balwal, the Jammu and Kashmir head of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) tasked with the probe, was getting nowhere. Intelligence agencies had no clue that the mastermind of the attack, Masood Azhar’s nephew Umar Farooq, had crossed over into Kashmir or that he had been killed in an encounter just a month after Pulwama. So what led the NIA joining the dots? Interestingly, it was Umar Farooq’s love for two thing—sportswear, and a Kashmiri woman.
The case unraveled thanks to a photograph, reveals a new book by author and journalist Rahul Pandita who interviewed investigating officers from the NIA and J&K police to weave together the story of how the Pulwama plot was cracked. Balwal tells Pandita that it was while looking at a photo of two terrorists slain in March that he got the gut feeling that the wellgroomed baby face in Adidas clothing wasn’t some ordinary guy. The police told him that the young man was called Idrees bhai. Balwal was also told about two confiscated phones, an iPhone and a Samsung S-9 Plus, that the police found too damaged and, hence, useless.
Convinced that the phones could hold some vital clues, Balwal used the occasion of the Kashmir IG’s farewell to appeal that the phones be sent to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). A week later, Balwal’s phone rang. It was an expert from CERT-In. ‘Sir, we have hit a jackpot,’ he said.
And jackpot it was. The 100 GB of data included a selfie of three men, one of whom Balwal recognised as the man he’d been told was Idrees bhai and the other as the Pulwama bomber Adil Dar. “In another photo in Idrees Bhai’s phone, the NIA investigators noticed a package from Amazon. They sent the consignment number to the company, which got back saying it was sent to one Waiz-ul-Islam, who had in the last few transactions bought aluminium powder, battery, chargers, knives and a pair of size 13 shoes.”
The book reveals that Umar had been told by Masood Azhar’s brother Rouf Asghar, the operational head of the Jaish, to destroy his phone after the Pulwama attack. But instead of doing that, he sent his uncle the picture of another smashed phone so he’d think that he had followed orders. Had Umar not made that mistake, it would have been very difficult to establish the Pulwama attack conspiracy all the way to Masood Azhar and his brothers, says Pandita.
But why did Umar not destroy his phone? The reason was Insha Jan, 22, a resident of Kashmir. Umar used the phone to chat with her and often stayed at their home as Insha’s father being a Jaish sympathiser. Her photo was also on the phone, posing with a pistol and an assault rifle. Little did Insha know that the Jaish commander or ‘The Lover Boy from Bahawalpur’ as the book calls him, had liaisons with several other Kashmiri women, including her own cousin sister.
But despite the phone cache, Balwal was yet to make the connection between Idrees Bhai and Umar, and it was again the love affair that clinched it. In February last year, the NIA picked up Shakir Bashir who sheltered the terrorists and drove Dar to the spot of the attack. At the interrogation, Balwal realized that Bashir wasn’t in it for the money or adventure but was committed to the cause. He was also puritanical. ‘Our officer showed him photos of Idrees Bhai and Insha Jan together. He was in utter disbelief that a man whom he revered could be cosy with women other than his wife,’ a senior official at the NIA headquarters is quoted as saying.
The shock of betrayal Bashir felt put the last piece of the puzzle in place. Soon after, he told Balwal: “Aapko kuch batana hai” (I have something to tell you). “Idrees Bhai is actually Umar Farooq and he is Masood Azhar’s nephew and the son of one of the hijackers of the IC-814 plane. He is the one who planned Pulwama.” That was what the NIA needed to establish that Idrees Bhai was none other than Umar Farooq, the Jaish commander who had planned the attack.
Rahul Pandita: B
June 20, 2021: The Times of India
Edited excerpts from The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur by Rahul Pandita with permission from Juggernaut
How a carpenter led the BSF to Ghazi Baba’s mirror hideout
After the 2001 Parliament attack, its mastermind Rana Tahir Nadeem, better known as Ghazi Baba, became hot property with every agency on the chase. Almost two decades after the incident, author of ‘The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur’ Rahul Pandita reveals how the elusive tikka-loving chief of the Jaish in Kashmir was smoked out. Exclusive excerpts…
In July 2001 — by this time the Jaish had replaced the Hizbul as the main terror outfit in Kashmir — Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey, a BSF officer on his second posting to the Valley, was in his office when he received a call from his commanding officer asking him to come to his office. As he reached there, he found the chief of the J&K Police’s Special Operations Group (SOG), Sunil Kumar, waiting for him. Kumar told Dubey and others that he had a source who had access to Baba. The source, he revealed, was responsible for supplying rations to the Jaish commander and his men at his hideout in Ganderbal.
The plan, Kumar said, was that the source would lace Baba’s food with the sedative diazepam and then a joint team of the SOG and the BSF would raid his hideout and arrest him. But by evening the operation was called off. It looked like the SOG’s mole had developed cold feet. Five months after this aborted mission Ghazi Baba’s planned attack on India’s Parliament was launched.
In July 2003 because of Vajpayee’s visit, the BSF had deputed personnel in every nook and corner of Srinagar city. In one of the narrow streets, the deployed BSF jawans saw a young nervous man on a cycle. He was stopped and searched. As the jawans opened his shirt, they were shocked to see explosives tied all around his body. He turned out to be Ansar bhai from Pakistan’s Faisalabad. He was initially not willing to cooperate but the BSF had found that Pakistani terrorists could not bear it if they were stripped. Ansar had the same fear. ‘Shoot me, but do not strip me, please,’ he pleaded. Something else also made Ansar tell his interrogators everything. A senior police officer had a small trick that he always deployed to work on the semiliterate militants. During interrogation, the officer would tell a terrorist how ‘handsome’ and ‘fit’ he was and that if he cooperated the officer would ensure he was not only let off but also that he was made an ‘important policeman’ in the force. The threat of being stripped and the lure of being made a policeman worked well on Ansar Bhai; he confessed that he was from the Jaish. ‘Do you know Ghazi Baba?’ Dubey asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied. He said he had no idea where Ghazi Baba’s hideout was. ‘But we speak on the wireless set twice a day, at 9.30 am and 3.30 pm,’ he said.
As they kept questioning Ansar, he told them that his code name was 08. This meant he was the deputy of Ghazi Baba, whose code name was 39. A BSF wireless operator Gandharva Kumar had heard terrorists calling 39 several times and saying ‘Murga tapka diya hain’ (The chicken has been killed) every time they murdered a soldier. Dubey convinced Ansar to call 39 at his usual time of 3.30 pm and try to extract information from him. But as soon as they switched on the set, they heard Ghazi speaking to someone else. Ansar recognized Ghazi’s voice immediately. ‘This is Masterji,’ he said, using the name they called Ghazi out of reverence. As they listened on, Ghazi told the unknown man on the other side that 08 (Ansar) had been missing since yesterday. ‘Be alert,’ he said.
Now Ansar was of no use to them. However, he had led them to a carpenter who was employed by the Jaish to make hideouts. He was brought to the base. But he said he was always blindfolded before he would be taken to construct these houses, most of them in Old Srinagar. ‘But I can tell you the location of one hideout,’ he said.
Dubey put him in a Santro car with his men and took him to identify the house. Once the house was identified, a big meeting of police officials took place at Dubey’s office. He was woken up at around 3 am by his colleagues. ‘Sir, it is time to go.’
By this time the BSF had laid a cordon in the area. Dubey took with him nine men, including his colleagues C.P. Trivedi, Himanshu Gaur and Binuchandran. They decided to get down a mile before and walk to the house. ‘I asked everyone to tread softly so that their boots wouldn’t make noise and also to keep the rifle chains from jangling,’ he says. As he reached the spot, Dubey was livid. The advance party of the BSF had laid siege around the wrong house! In two minutes, Dubey corrected this. As the right house was cordoned off, Dubey saw that someone on the house’s top (third) floor had switched on a light and then switched it off. This was clearly a signal. Binuchandran kicked open the gate. Dubey checked his watch; it was 4.10 am.
On the third floor, the house’s top floor where Dubey had spotted someone switching the light on and off, there was nothing much except a few cushions and wall-towall carpeting. Against one wall was a dressing table of sorts with a mirror. Binu, remembers Dubey, picked up a comb and began combing his hair.
Dubey was getting frustrated. There was nothing here. He asked his men to bring the carpenter who was in a car on the road below. When he was brought, he said nothing except one word: sheesha (mirror). Binu lifted his rifle and hit the mirror. What Dubey remembers of the next five minutes is this: there was a deafening explosion as soon as the mirror fell down and a burst of bullets from inside the room that the mirror was hiding. Balbir Singh took the first hit and was dead. A hand grenade thrown from inside exploded and its splinters claimed two fingers of one of the BSF soldiers, Neelkamal. Dubey looked down after the grenade explosion. His right hand was nearly severed from his arm, but he felt no pain. He picked up his rifle with his left hand and fired inside, a total of fourteen rounds. Then another hand grenade came and landed at his feet. He kicked it back inside. As he did this he saw a man in a blue shirt lying motionless face down inside the room.
Later, the security forces barged into the house. The body upstairs of the man in the blue shirt was identified as that of none other than Ghazi Baba.
2019
The Pulwama probe closes
NIA's painstaking Pulwama probe almost reaches dead end, February 14, 2020: The Times of India
SRINAGAR: The probe into last year's Pulwama terror strike that left 40 CRPF personnel dead has virtually reached a dead end with five persons, who were either conspirators or executers of the ghastly attack, being eliminated by security forces in various encounters. However, the case threw unique challenges for the NIA, the anti-terror probe agency formed in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror strikes in 2008, as it there is no solid information about the perpetrators or the mastermind behind the attack.
"It was a blind case for us. There were lot of murmurs but everything needs to be established beyond doubt in the court of law," a senior official, who is part of the probe, said here.
The first challenge was to establish the owner of the car used by suicide bomber Adil Ahmed Dar. There was nothing available from the vehicle which carried a cocktail of explosives like Ammonium Nitrate, Nitro Glycerine and RDX, the official said.
But with the help of forensic methods and painstaking investigations, the serial number of the car that was blown into pieces beyond recognition was extracted and within no time the ownership of the vehicle was established -- from the first to the last owner.
However, the last owner of the car, Sajjad Bhat of Bijbehara in Anantnag district, had disappeared hours before the February 14 attack and joined Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit. He was subsequently killed in an encounter in June last year.
"While it was clear that the suicide attacker was Adil Ahmed Dar but the same had to be established with evidence. After picking up human remains from various spots, it was sent for DNA profiling.
"The suicide attacker was identified and confirmed by matching the DNA extracted from the meagre car fragments with that of the DNA of his father," the official, who requested anonymity, said.
The role of other conspirators which included Mudasir Ahmed Khan, Qari Mufti Yasser and Kamran came to light but all of them were killed in different encounters with security forces.
Khan was killed on March 10, Kamran on March 29, Sajjad Bhat on June 18 of last year while Qari yasser was shot in an encounter on January 25, this year.
After JeM spokesperson Mohd Hassan in a video claimed that his group was responsible for the attack, it was sent for forensic examination and the Internet Protocol address was traced to a computer based in Pakistan.
The official said that during the investigation, the NIA stumbled upon another case of over ground workers of Jaish-e-Mohammed which was subsequently busted.
"Eight people have been listed in a charge sheet in this case so far," the official said.
Pakistan’s role
Pakistan minister admits government’s role
October 29, 2020: The Times of India
Pakistan minister admits to Imran govt role in Pulwama attack, calls it 'great success' NEW DELHI: A Pakistani minister on Wednesday admitted that Islamabad was behind last year's Pulwama terror strike on CRPF jawans, describing the dastardly attack as a "great success" of the Imran Khan leadership.
"Humne Hindustan ko ghus ke maara (We hit India in their home). Our success in Pulwama is a success of the people under the leadership of Imran Khan. You and us are all part of that success," Fawad Chaudhury, a minister in the Imran Khan cabinet, said in the National Assembly.
This is the first time that the country's government has openly admitted to its role in last year's attack.
Chaudhury's boastful claims came after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Sardar Ayaz Sadiq recounted the tension within the Pakistan government in February last year while speaking to Dunya News during a programme on Wednesday.
Sadiq had revealed that army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was perspiring and his "legs were shaking" as foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that if Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was not released, India would attack Pakistan “at 9pm".
The attack, in which 40 CRPF jawans were killed, was claimed by Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had recently filed a chargesheet in the terror attack case which had references to the role of Pakistani state actors including ISI.
Pakistan, which has repeatedly denied its involvement in the attacks, had rejected the chargesheet and called it a "mischievous attempt" to implicate Islamabad for the attack.
Then IAF chief on why Pak army chief was 'shaking, sweating'
October 29, 2020: The Times of India
Abhinandan's release: Ex-IAF chief on why Pak army chief was 'shaking, sweating'
NEW DELHI: India's military posture after the Balakot airstrikes was "very offensive" and that could be the reason why a Pakistani MP said that their army chief's "legs were trembling", former Air Force chief B S Dhanoa said.
"The way he (Pakistan MP) is saying that 'Pair kaanp rahe the' (legs were trembling). It is because our military posture was very offensive," the former air chief was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. Earlier, Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Ayaz Sadiq revealed in the National Assembly that foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had said that India would attack Pakistan "by 9pm" if the country did not release Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.
"I remember Qureshi was in the meeting which Imran Khan had refused to attend ... the chief of army staff General Bajwa came into the room, his legs were shaking and he was perspiring. The foreign minister said for God's sake let Abhinandan go, India's about to attack Pakistan at 9pm", Sadiq said.
The 37-year-old IAF pilot took down a Pakistani F-16 aircraft during a dogfight across the LoC on February 27 last year. He was captured by the Pakistani army after his MiG-21 Bison jet went down during the combat. The incident took place a day after IAF jets bombed the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) terror camps in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan to avenge the Pulwama terror attack.
Reacting to Sadiq's remarks, Dhanoa said that following the Balakot incident, India was in a position to wipe out Pakistan's forward brigades.
"God forbid ... had they hit some of our military installations, we were in a position to wipe out their forward brigades. They know what is our capability," he said.
"Abhinandan's father and I served together. So, when Abhinandan ejected I told him that we could not get Ahuja back, but will definitely get Abhinandan back. During the Kargil war, my flight commander Ahuja was captured and shot dead. That was playing on my mind. I told him that there are two parts. The main pressure on Pakistan was diplomatic and political. But there was also a military posture," Dhanoa told ANI.
The former IAF chief said that the Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorists and their Pakistani handlers were scared following the Balakot attack as they knew that India can hit them in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) as well as in Pakistan.
"Till the time Indian elections got over, there was nothing because they knew the response is going to be very swift. We were deployed in this manner that we could respond at a very short notice. It is very good for the morale that he was released at such a short period of time and he came back unharmed," he said.
Abhinandan was returned to India from the Attari-Wagah border on March 1, 2019. He was awarded the Vir Chakra on Independence Day by President Ram Nath Kovind for his exemplary bravery.
