The Hindu : New Delhi News : "Terrorists roping in Govt. employees"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 13, 2006
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New Delhi

"Terrorists roping in Govt. employees"

Devesh K. Pandey

NEW DELHI: Investigations into terrorist modules smashed by the Delhi police in the recent past have indicated that militant outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley have been roping in Government employees to work as conduits to evade detection.

Mohammad Amin Hazam, who was arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police at Mahipalpur on Sunday, worked as a junior assistant with the J&K State Revenue Department at Baramulla. During interrogation, he allegedly revealed that he had been offered a good "commission" for carrying consignments of explosives and illegal hawala money to different destinations.

Arrested

About a fortnight ago, the Special Cell had arrested Mustaq Ahmed Wani, a constable posted as personal security officer of a political leader in the Valley, on similar charges.

The police purportedly recovered Rs.6 lakhs of hawala money from him. It is learnt that both Mustaq and Amin were being handled by a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) district commander posted at Pattan in the Kashmir Valley, who operates under the codename Abu Tahir. But the duo did not know each other.

"It also shows that the outfit has devised a method of "need-to-know" basis for information sharing between different modules to evade detection by the security and intelligence agencies," said a senior police officer, adding that terrorist organisations roped in Government staffers -- either through allurement or threats -- to ensure that the money and the explosive consignments sent for them did not get into the hands of the security agencies.

Money transferred

In July last year the South-West Delhi police had arrested one Abdul Qayoom Khan on charges of operating as a hawala agent for Hizbul Mujahideen.

The police later found that Abdul was a deputy director in the Soil Conservation Department. They found that through him huge amounts of money were transferred and allegedly distributed among the terrorists.

In January 2002, the police had arrested four alleged LeT militants, including one Afzal who worked as a junior engineer in the Rural Development Department at Anantnag. Interestingly, the police had then said that Afzal was also assigned the task of collecting hawala money sent from Pakistan via Central Asian countries.

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