Delhi terror operative Umar Zargar held in Srinagar

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, May 02: Resident of Nawab Bazar area of downtown Srinagar, Umar Zargar, has been arrested by Police and subjected to sustained interrogation for his alleged involvement in planning and executing terrorist strikes for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba in different places of New Delhi. Having intercepted certain e-mail communications, in which Zargar had been assigned a key role, intelligence and security agencies of a number of foreign countries, particularly United States of America, had sounded a red alert and advised their citizens to stop movement in a number of the Indian cities last month.

Authoritative sources revealed to Early Times that Umar Zargar had been picked up by District Police Srinagar on specific inputs from national and foreign intelligence agencies. His e-mail IDs and mobile phones had been identified and both were being scanned on the basis of his revelations made during the course of his sustained interrogation. Sources said that entire criminal activity of the accused would be investigated in Srinagar but they did not rule out his shifting to New Delhi for focused interrogation by national and foreign agencies.

Sources said that the sleuths were busy with the process of seizing Zargar’s laptop and two more of his mobile phones. They said that entire call detail records of the telephones used by Zargar were being tracked to identify others in his network. Sources said that Zargar’s key handler was a Pakistani national whose identity was being ascertained and he was likely to be arrested by FBI through Pakistani security agencies and Police as in certain cases US nationals seemed to be the priority targets than the Indian nationals.

Sources said that Zargar was supposed to have received an explosive consignment in Srinagar last month. However, he could not be contacted by his handlers as he had been found involved in some incidents of stone pelting and put in detention from April 23 to April 26. For unknown reasons, Police had set him free on April 26th.

The alerts as regards the terror strikes in New Delhi have come from the intelligence agencies of the countries like US, UK, Australia and Canada. The US has warned its citizens in an advisory of "imminent" strike in the capital. It has also asked Americans to avoid markets like Sarojini Nagar, Karol Bagh and Greater Kailash.
Intelligence agencies had alerted the Centre of a possible terror strike on Saturday. Sources said the sustained interrogation of the captured youth was on and some vital clues were expected at his instance.
Sources the terror threat in Delhi was aimed at disrupting the Commonwealth Games in Delhi later this year. Emails received by sports bodies in UK, Canada and Australia had warned them not to send athletes to Delhi for the games. These emails had been traced to servers in Pakistan, the sources added.
Sources say terrorists are planning to target Commonwealth Games infrastructure, participants and organisers ahead of the Games.There was credible intelligence that at least three terror modules had been asked to trigger attacks in Delhi.

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