NEW DELHI: A Jammu and Kashmir-based counter-terrorism operation led police to the Al-Badr terrorists arrested in Mysore early on Friday, security sources told The Hindu.

In September, Intelligence Bureau operatives learned that a Pakistan-based Al-Badr operative had visited Jammu. Informants told the domestic covert service that the Pakistani national had handed over Rs. 3,00,000 to finance a Srinagar-based terror cell.

Little was known about the Srinagar cell, other than that it was led by an operative code-named `Imran.'

Late in September, the intelligence inputs enabled the Jammu and Kashmir police to locate the individual who received the cash — Srinagar-based engineering student Shabbir Ahmad Bhat.

The interrogation of Bhat soon led investigators to `Imran' himself. Now identified as Javed Ahmad Bhat, a resident of Aglar, a village in south Kashmir, the Al-Badr commander was shot dead along with his associate Gulzar Ahmad Mir in an October 20 encounter. Cash and weapons were recovered from their safe-house on the outskirts of Srinagar.

Meanwhile, painstaking intelligence work enabled the investigators to track the Pakistani national who had met Shabbir Bhat back to Mysore. Mohammad Fahad, who had arrived in India on legitimate travel documents, was now placed under surveillance. Soon afterwards, the investigators were also able to locate Mohammad Ali Hussain, the second terrorist.

Husain is thought to have crossed the Line of Control in June this year through the Rajwar forests in northern Kashmir.

He hid himself in the Harwan area until he received instructions to travel to Mysore. Investigators believe that Hussain was one of several Al-Badr operatives despatched to execute terror strikes outside Jammu and Kashmir.

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