Mohammad Ajmal Amir’s Faridkot village in Depalpur district of Punjab in Pakistan has been virtually cordoned off from the outside world.
ISLAMABAD: Captured Mumbai terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir’s Faridkot village in Depalpur district of Punjab in Pakistan has been virtually cordoned off from the outside world. The village has been taken over by intelligence agencies in a bid to dissuade local as well as foreign media from filing any more reports that could further establish Ajmal’s identity as a Pakistani national.
The Pakistani authorities have dispatched dozens of intelligence agents as well as heavy police contingents to cordon off the entrance to the village in a bid to stop further media intrusion. While using the influence of village elders, the agencies have ensured that even if a media team is able to reach Faridkot, none of the 450-plus residents of the village is allowed to speak to its members.
The family members of Ajmal, including his father, mother, brothers and sisters, have been moved out of their Faridkot residence and shifted to another village nearby so that journalists cannot approach them.
As soon as any media team enters the village, the agencies’ personnel, posing as residents, some armed with lathis, start shouting at them to leave and not take camera shots.
In the latest development, a foreign TV channel team was attacked by ‘villagers’ with punches and kicks. Their mobile phones were snatched by the crowd who also tried to smash their cameras. A recent report in Chicago Tribune, therefore, read: “Some people from the agencies are among the villagers who are organising the whole drama in Faridkot village, which seems to be under some kind of shadowy siege.”
Since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month, hundreds of foreign and Pakistani journalists, both from the print and electronic media, have visited the home town of the lone surviving member of the terror squad. They have filed reports that have almost proved India’s claim that Ajmal was a Pakistani member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The Observer of Britain was the first to break the news, after an independent investigation, that Ajmal was a Pakistani citizen. The Observer obtained electoral lists for Faridkot showing 478 registered voters, including Mohammad Amir Iman, husband of Noor Elahi. At the address mentioned in the list, a man identifying himself as Sultan said he was the father-in-law of Amir, Ajmal’s father.
The Observer report was enough to mobilise other foreign and local journalists in Pakistan who had been trying to locate this village in Punjab since the Indian government had claimed that Ajmal belonged to Faridkot. The media teams subsequently started storming the village, followed by two more ‘damaging’ reports by English daily Dawn and Geo Television, which further established the Indian claim.
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