The Hindu : National : Alleged Jaish conduit arrested

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Saturday, Nov 12, 2005

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National

Alleged Jaish conduit arrested

Staff Reporter

Delhi police allege that he brought terrorists involved in Ayodhya attack case

NEW DELHI: An alleged conduit of the terrorist outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), who shuttled between India and Bangladesh and had ferried the terrorists involved in the Ayodhya attack this July, was arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police at New Delhi railway station on Friday. With his arrest, the police hope to identify and trace the JeM militants he helped infiltrate into the country.

According to the Joint Commissioner of Police (Special Cell), Karnal Singh, for the past four months a team under the supervision of the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Sanjeev Yadav, had been following the movements of the Ayodhya attack suspects. The team was stationed at Kolkata when it received a tip-off on Thursday that one of the suspects would go to Delhi on board the Purvanchal Express.

Subsequently, the Special Cell sleuths followed him to Delhi and when he was at the exit-point of the railway station, they overpowered him. During interrogation, he identified himself as Abdul Baqi, a resident of a village located near the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal. He allegedly disclosed that he had been working as a conduit for the JeM, which has its base in Dhaka, for the past three years. His job was to help terrorists cross over to India. On several occasions he ferried them till Delhi, and also took them back to Bangladesh. This time, he had been directed to ferry two people staying in an Old Delhi guesthouse to Bangladesh.

Shocking revelation

Baqi's most shocking revelation was that he had brought over a dozen JeM terrorists to Delhi, who were part of the plan hatched in Bangladesh to carry out a daring attack in Ayodhya. It took him over six trips to bring all the militants to the Capital. Among them was Mehmood, the mastermind behind the attack, who stayed at Mehrauli in South Delhi for over a couple of months to supervise the operation.

Baqi allegedly disclosed that after Ghazi Baba, the JeM chief for operations in India, was killed in an encounter with the armed forces in the Kashmir Valley in 2003, he helped Baba's wife and his 18-month-old daughter to cross over to Bangladesh via West Bengal.

Given the fact that Baqi knows a lot about militants based in Bangladesh and brought several terrorists to India in the past few years, the Special Cell and the intelligence agencies are interrogating him to gather specific information on JeM's activities and future plans.

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