The Hindu : New Delhi News : IB operation helped make headway

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Monday, Feb 11, 2008
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New Delhi

IB operation helped make headway

Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI: Mohammad Sabahuddin, a one-time resident of Madhubani in Bihar who underwent three years advanced training at Lashkar-e-Taiba-run facilities in Pakistan before returning to India to organise the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, has been identified as the head of Lashkar cell. He was one of the arrested in Uttar Pradesh in the early hours of Sunday.

Mohammad Sharif, who was in charge of the terror module’s operations in Uttar Pradesh, has been identified as the organiser of the CRPF camp attack.

Operating under the codename “Sohail,” he brought the assault rifles used from Pulwama in southern Kashmir. Two others involved in the attack, Imran Boota, a resident of Pakistan’s Gujaranwala district who operated under the codename Abu Jaar, and Farooq Azam, a resident of Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, who used the codename Abu Osama, served with the Lashkar in southern Kashmir.

CRPF failure

Police sources said the arrests were the outcome of information garnered in the course of an Intelligence Bureau operation, which led to pinpoint warnings being made available on the Rampur attack days before the strike actually took place, as first reported in The Hindu. However, the CRPF controversially failed to enhance its perimeter security or cancel scheduled New Year festivities.

The passports seized were intended to facilitate their return to Pakistan through Nepal after the strike. A Pakistani passport issued under the name of Hammad Hassan was also recovered from Fahim Ahmad Ansari, a Mumbai-based Lashkar operative, who investigators say was helping the group organise attacks in the city.

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