Silver Star CCTV found shut since evening of Oct 18

Pak ultra Qasim identified among 4 in LeT’s Sajjad group

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Oct 30: Much to its surprise, Special Operations Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir Police has observed that CCTV system at Silver Star had been switched off 22 hours before the suspected militants of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba raided the three-star hotel on the National Highway Bypass in Srinagar outskirts on October 19^th.

Two young civilians, who were both junior employees of the hotel, had died and two more of their colleagues had sustained injuries when four heavily armed gunmen, suspected to be the cadres of LeT, had attacked Solver Star hotel at 4.30 p.m. on October 19^th. While as authorities had claimed that the militants caused the bloodshed after they failed in their plans to attack a convoy of security forces, LeT spokesman had claimed that Army suffered casualties as two fully packed vehicles became the target of its militants who all reached safely back to their hideout after the ‘fidayeen attack’.

Sources associated with the investigation revealed to Early Times that two of the four ‘fidayeen’ had been identified even as two more were likely to be identified in a couple of days. All the four, according to these sources, were members of the Sajjad group of LeT. Operating in Pampore-Wuyan-Nowgam-Parigam belt, Sajjad is said to be a resident of Zewan village. However, he was not among the four of his associates who did a fierce shootout at the hotel and escaped successfully, sources said.

Qasim, who is believed to be a Pakistani national and involved in a fatal highway strike on Army at Pampore earlier this year, as also LeT’s Kashmiri functionary, Imtiyaz of Kulgam, are said to have been identified as participants of the ‘fidayeen’ attack on the hotel. At least one militant of the group has been identified with the help of a previous video recording by the CCTV as Police tallied his visuals with the photographs already in their possession. It indicates that the militants had carried out a reconnaissance survey of the spot before they struck on the hotel earlier this month.

The investigators, who are still processing hundreds of call detail records of cellphones and video recordings, have noticed that the hotel’s CCTV system had been “unusually” shut off at 6.00 p.m. on October 18^th. When questioned by Police about it, the hotel’s proprietors and staff insisted that the system had closed down automatically when the electric supply went off a day before the shootout.

The investigators have, nevertheless, seized the CCTV system with all of its cameras and processing units. Its back up has been preserved and is being scanned by a technical team helping SOG in the investigation. According to sources, it contains the recorded footage of 30 days prior to the militant strike.

Police, according to sources, were trying to ascertain whether the militants had operated with the help of some insider at the hotel or the CCTV had really stopped working in absence of power supply.

Presence and movement of the LeT group in Pampore area had led to return of a Rashtriya Rifles camp at Chhatergam village earlier this month. However, within days, it suffered a setback when soldiers of a different battalion of Army opened fire on a privately engaged Tata Sumo of RR 53 Bn, killing a Territorial Army driver on spot out of confusion. He was a resident of Beerwah area of Budgam district.

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