NIA today arrested the truck driver who allegedly ferried Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Mohammed Yakub Naved to Jammu on two occasions, including on August four, a day before he and his accomplice ambushed a BSF bus, killing two of its personnel.
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All of them are being questioned at an undisclosed location.
The NIA is reconstructing the sequence of events that led to Udhampur attack and is taking him to places that he has mentioned during interrogation.
Earlier this month, two BSF jawans were martyred when the militants attacked their convoy in Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur district. Sources said that NIA investigators are also trying to identify possible sleeper cells which could have helped the militants with lodging and selecting targets.
The truck driver has been identified as 35-year-old Khursheed Ahmed Butt, alias “Surya”, an alleged over-ground LeT operative.
According to officials Khursheed had taken Naved and his accomplice to Jammu on July 20 on a reconnaissance mission during which the timings of convoys of BSF and army were marked.
The NIA had earlier this week released sketches of terrorists identified as Zargham, alias Muhammed Bhai, 38-40, and Abu Okasha, 17-18, both from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan. The agency now believes that Qasim might have briefed the militants as well as the driver before launching the attack.
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NIA has also announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for capture of Abu Qasim, a Pakistani national hailing from Bhawalpur and commander of LeT’s South Kashmir operations. He is a resident of Awantipura in southern Pulwama district and has served a jail term of two and a half years in a case of drug-trafficking. “Bhat was evading arrest, but was finally nabbed from a hideout in the Pinglina village of Pulwama”, they said, adding that the NIA team had been looking for him after revelations by Naved, who is in Srinagar in the anti-terror agency’s custody.
