26 December 2000

RED FORT RAID HANDIWORK OF PAKISTANI SSG COMMANDOS

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: Two militants who shot dead three Army personnel in the last Friday night attack at the historic Red Fort here are suspected to be Pakistan Army's trained Special Service Group (SSG) commandos on lease to the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Delhi Police on Tuesday shot dead one of them in the vicinity of the Jamia Milia University here and nabbed another accomplice and said both were Pakistani nationals and belonged to Lashkar. The intelligence sources, however, insisted that the men may be Lashkar operatives but not the commandos involved in the surprise attack on the Army barrack inside the Red Fort as they seem to have already slipped out of Delhi.

After series of raids carried out on guest houses and residences in the Jama Masjid, Nizamuddin and other Muslim-dominated areas for the past three days, an intercepted call on a cellular phone led Police to the hideout of the culprits in Jamia Nagar. The private house was surrounded by Police soon after midnight but the gun battle began only around 6 in the morning, resulting in the death of terrorist Abul Samar and arrest of Ashfaq Ahmed. They had taken the first floor flat on rent posing as students of Jamia Milia University.

Ashfaq, described by Deputy Commissioner of Police Upadhye as the brain behind the Red Fort attack, told Police that six militants were involved in storming the Army unit. His interrogations led to a series of raids that continued throughout the day on Tuesday.

ALERT: The intelligence sources said they had already alerted the authorities in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Mumbai, Hyderabad and several other states about the possible attacks by the SSG commandos who have been smuggled into India specially to organise raids on the Indian security forces.

The alert was sounded on the basis of a series of reports from the field intelligence units (FIUs) in Kashmir about the reported entry of a number of Pakistan's SSG commandos in the Pakistani terrorist organisations, particularly Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul Mujahideen and Jiahs-e-Mohammed, to help them organise attacks on the army and security force camps, the sources said.

They pointed out that the terrorist organisations were not equipped to take the risk of entering the army and security force camps and hence they had been extended the help of the SSG commandos who can organise surprise raids and escape without trace. The number of these commandos who have sneaked into India, however, cannot be assessed, the sources said.

Presence of an unspecified number of SSG commandos in the districts of Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla in the Kashmir Valley had engaged the attention of men of the field intelligence units (FIUs) after the interception of a message revealing the Lashkar’s dependence on the "valiant commands available here and there," the sources said.

TARGETS: They said radio intercepts of an "order" from across the border sought to trigger "aandhi aur toofaan" (storm and thunder) in major cities. Instructions in the intercepted message made a specific mention of the use of bombs and IEDs and RDX in public thoroughfares, passenger buses and trains.

It was this intercepted message announcing the "march of our trusted commandos in aid of jehad" that the government had warned the leaders of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to take care while mixing with crowds and allow the security men of the government to provide them protection. The part of the intercepted message said:

"Headquarters Bharat ke saath is maukepar par koyi samjhota karne ke liye tayyaar nahi hai. Isliye aap par yeh jimvaari ayed ki jaati hai ki aap log Hurriyat ke andar Bharati kutton ka khaatima karen (Lashkar’s headquarters is not for a reconciliation with India at this stage. Therefore, you are assigned the responsibility of eliminating Indian dogs operating within the Hurriyat Conference)."

The Hurriyat Conference leaders are, however, not much perturbed by this message as they point out that it may be an old intercept since the government agencies take days and weeks before waking up to such messages. They assert that the Pakistan Government will not issue such instructions at a time when it has been issuing statements of "warm welcome" to the Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders planning to visit Islamabad and when Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar has announced that they would be able to talks to Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf and other leaders. END