Key Aide To Pahalgam Attack Terrorists Arrested In Jammu And Kashmir

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi/Srinagar, Sep 24 (IANS) In a major breakthrough, the Jammu and Kashmir have arrested one person accused of providing logistical support to the terrorists involved in the April 22 Pahalgam attack. The arrested individual has been identified as Mohammad Kataria.

The arrest took place following a forensic analysis of weapons and equipment that were recovered during Operation Mahadev which was carried out in July this year.

During this operation, security forces tracked down and neutralised three terrorists who killed 26 people in Pahalgam.

The National Investigation Agency which is also investigating this case had in June arrested two men for allegedly harbouring the terrorists who had carried out the attack.

Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar from Batkote and Bashir Ahmad Jothar of Hill Park, Pahalgam, had disclosed the identities of the three terrorists who were involved in the attack.

They are said to have provided food and shelter to the terrorists.

The NIA had also arrested a resident of Handwara and interrogated him in connection with the funding that went into this attack.

The agency also is scrutinising 450 phone numbers, including of those involved in 80 cases that are being investigated by the agency since 2011.

The agency learnt that one Yasir Hayat was in touch with a suspected Malaysian based handler Sajad Ahmed Mir and two others from Pakistan.

Hayat was being instructed by Mir to give funds to the tune of Rs 2 lakh to Shafat Wani. During his trip to Malaysia, Hayat was in touch with two Pakistanis.

In all, Wani is said to have received a sum of Rs 9 lakh which was used to fund terror activities.

The NIA in a statement said that it had uncovered a foreign trail of funds, which is under scrutiny.

The NIA probe exposes a complex network of foreign funding that was linked to accounts in Malaysia.

The money was being routed in for The Resistance Front which carried out the attack. The Indian Intelligence Agencies and the Jammu and Kashmir Police along with the NIA are trying to build a detailed dossier on the outfit.

This would comprise the funding details, radicalisation, training and recruitment into the terror outfit. The The Resistence Front is just a proxy of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

It was created by the ISI to suggest that the Kashmir battle was being fought by locals. The ISI also wanted a deniability for Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Taiba each time The Resistance Front undertook an attack on Indian soil.

The dossier that is being prepared by the agencies is also important in the context of nailing the terror funding route which links Pakistan to it.

India proposes to corner Pakistan at the Financial Action Task Force and hopes that the country will go back into the Grey List, like it had a few years back.

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