The Hindu : CBI team meets Muttawakil

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 21, 2003

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CBI team meets Muttawakil

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 20. A two-member Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team that headed to Afghanistan to gather clues in the four-year-old IC-814 Indian Airlines hijacking case has returned here after meeting Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the then Afghanistan Foreign Minister during the Taliban rule.

Sources said the team which left here for Kabul last Monday and returned on Friday had a meeting with Muttawakil who was recently released by the U.S. from its custody. Of the 10 accused, chargesheeted before a Sessions Court in Patiala where trial in the 1999 hijack case is currently going on, only three have been arrested and the rest are absconding. Sources said it was not clear if Muttawakil's interview to the CBI team could be used during the ongoing trial.

As an American citizen was among the passengers of the Kathmandu-Delhi flight of the Indian Airlines which was hijacked to Kandahar on December 26, 1999, the U.S. agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), had also registered a case and carried out its own investigations. It is learnt that the CBI is requesting the FBI to share with it the transcript of the interrogation of Muttawakil. The FBI had already quizzed the Indian Airlines crew members of the IC-814 flight, some of the passengers and the three accused.

The CBI is also in the process of preparing and sending Letters Rogatory to Bangladesh and Afghanistan seeking assistance in the hijack case.

The agency plans to interrogate some Nepali citizens, sources said.

It has also not been able to get some of the original papers regarding the IC-814 Airbus A-300 flight from Kathmandu.

The hijack drama had ended on December 31 after the five hijackers successfully bargained for freeing the hostages in exchange for the release of three militants from Indian prisons, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar. All the hijackers and the three released militants were believed to have sneaked into Pakistan.

The CBI was entrusted with the case on January 11, 2000 and the three accused, Abdul Latif, Yusuf Nepali and Kuma Bhujal arrested in June, 2000 are facing trial in a Sessions Court in Patiala under various provisions of the Hijack Act, Arms Act and Indian Penal Code.

During the probe, the CBI examined as many as 113 witnesses and its investigators also visited Nepal and Dubai.

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