Constable Abbas---a kin of Navy deserter Jan Maulvi

5 more lifted in Tral for sustained interrogation

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jun 18: With a Special Investigation Team of District Police Srinagar continuing raids and lifting five more persons for questioning in Tral, detained CID constable, Mohammad Abbas, has surfaced to be a cousin of top wanted militant, Jan Mohammad Ahangar, who had deserted Navy and was subsequently killed in a gunbattle in Pulwama district.

Highly placed sources in J&K Police revealed to Early Times that SIT was smoothly carrying on investigation into the Police-militant nexus that has surfaced last week in wake of the assassination of a former militant of Hizbul Mujahideen, namely Ghulam Hassan Mir alias Shabnam. Arrested in 2006 and released in 2007, Shabnam had shifted his residence and business to Sadarbal area of Srinagar where he was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on June 7^th. These sources strongly contradicted New Delhi-based media reports that J&K Police had granted access to “certain Central agencies” in the interrogation of four Police and CID personnel arrested and booked in Shabnam’s killing.

According to these sources, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had personally taken a meeting with the J&K Police top brass on the exposure of a nexus between Police personnel and militants of Hizbul Mujahideen operating in Tral area. They asserted that even the Principal Secretary Home, B R Sharma, emphasized that J&K Police was “very much capable” of holding the investigation independently and there was no need for it to go for any “agni pariksha” to establish its integrity and competence. Sources said that officiating DGP, K Rajendra Kumar, as well as IGP Kashmir, S M Sahai, too were on the same page.

“There is no scope of a detainee being passed on to intelligence agencies or paramilitary forces for custodial interrogation. We have registered the FIR under law and we only can investigate it. Central agencies or forces, should they so desire, could be associated later after we complete the investigation”, a senior authoritative source maintained. He claimed that CRPF had neither sought any detainees’ custody, for interrogation or otherwise, nor had been anybody from the force associated with the process till date.

Sources said that over the disclosures of four Police and CID personnel, SIT had today taken into custody five civilians who had purportedly remained in association of Shabnam’s assassins or helped them in different capacities in carrying out subversive activities. Sources identified the fresh detainees as Shahbaz (a driver of Rishipora Tral), Bilal (a motor mechanic of Rishipora), Mohammad Amin alias Amin Battery (a mechanic of Haina Tral), Tauseef Ahmad (a carpenter of Haina) and Riyaz Ahmad (resident of Rishipora and brother of a detained Police constable).

Sources said that Awantipore District Police lifted all the five and passed them on to SIT in Srinagar for questioning. Detained Police personnel, Mohammad Abbas of Buchoo Tral, Mohammad Illyas of Kaw Mohalla, Khanyar and Mukhtar Ahmad Sheikh of Rainawari are understood to have made certain disclosures that led to the detention of five civilian in Tral.

Even as these sources maintained that three District Police personnel and three CID personnel had been already detained and subjected to questioning, SSP Srinagar, Syed Ashiq Hussain Bukhari, claimed that only three CID officials and one District Police official were under custodial interrogation. According to him, involvement of the group and its activity was so far limited only to Shabnam’s killing, though SIT was investigating if the detainees were involved in any other subversive incident or area.

Early Times learned from authoritative sources that Constable Mohammad Abbas of Buchoo, Tral, who was the key character in the network, was a cousin of the once top wanted militant, Jan Mohammad Ahangar alias Jan Maulvi alias Hamza S/o Abdul Gani Ahangar R/o Buchoo, Tral. On August 16^th, 2009, Jan Maulvi had got killed in a fierce gunbattle with security forces at village Aramulla, Pulwama. One AK-56 rifle, one grenade and four mobile phone sets had been recovered from the site of the encounter.

Two of Jan Maulvi’s associates had managed to escape. Even as Army helicopters were pressed into the search, security forces failed to get their clue. Sources said that Army wanted to question Jan Maulvi and his associates in a subversive incident that had occurred few years back in Navy’s War College in South India. Sources said that before joining militancy, Jan Maulvi had joined Navy and functioned as a navigator for some time. Later, he deserted the Indian Navy and returned to Tral, only to join the local militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. He subsequently shifted to Pakistan-based Jihadi militant outfit, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Jan is believed to have indoctrinated Abbas and others from Tral area and motivated them to work for militants.

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