Arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba militant spills the beans to Jammu and Kashmir Police, lays bare neighbour’s nefarious designs.
Even as Islamabad claimed on Friday it was committed to bringing perpetrators of 26/11 to justice, it was revealed that terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which were closed under international pressure after the Mumbai attack, had reopened.
Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed top Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant Saleem Rahmani, who was arrested in Budgam recently, had told them that the terror infrastructure in PoK had been surreptitiously revived.
The 24-year-old militant, indoctrinated at Nawabshah in Pakistan’s Sindh province, said Lashkar training centres in PoK, which were sealed after 26/11, had been reopened.
“The centres have been reopened, but with a different strategy. Instead of permanent training camps, Lashkar is now running temporary camps in forests,” Rahmani, who was paraded before the media by police, reiterated.
The militant was part of an eight-member Lashkar squad that infiltrated the Valley a few months ago. Security forces almost immediately killed two of them at Kangan and three at Lolab. An injured Rahmani, who had managed to escape then, was arrested from a hideout in Budgam district recently.
Inspector general (IG) of police (Kashmir range) Shiv Murari Sahai said during interrogation, Rahmani revealed that the Pakistani government and army continued to support terrorist activities.
“He told us that he was trained at the Manshera camp in PoK. They [Pakistan] had claimed to have closed this camp, but it has been operating secretly,” he said.
Sahai said the Lashkar-affiliated Ismail Rahmani mosque in Nawabshah, which was reportedly closed down, had also been revived. “Rahmani has told us it has been reopened,” he said, adding that 250 to 300 militants were waiting across LoC to infiltrate.
In each camp there are around 50 militants ready to infiltrate and there have been 45 infiltration bids in the past five months, Sahai claimed.
He said there had been an upsurge in militancy in recent months.
“Militants played a significant role in fuelling the street protests Kashmir saw in the [past] five months [of unrest]. A Lashkar militant opened a small Quran teaching institute in Batamaloo whose real motive was to recruit youths for stone-pelting. Some of the youths recruited by the militant were also involved in grenade-throwing,” Sahai claimed.
The IG said cases had been registered against Ghulam Mohammad Tantray, a senior leader of Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s hardline Hurriyat Conference who was caught talking to Furqan, LeT’s Kashmir chief, over phone.
He was known to be involved in organising protests on a large-scale in Rafiabad and Sopore, including stone-pelting at troops.
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