NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: India on Wednesday landed its ‘big catch’ — a self-confessed Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist, who boasted that he had come to India to kill Hindus.
The terrorist, Mohammed Naved from Faisalabad in Pakistan and his partner Noman, ambushed a BSF convoy near Udhampur on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, indiscriminately firing automatic rifles and hurling grenades. Two BSF constables, Rocky and Shubhendu Roy, were killed in the ambush. Noman was killed in the retaliatory firing. Following this, Naved took three to five hostages and moved to a forested area.
“He threatened to kill us if we didn’t guide him to the upper reaches of the forest area. He kept abusing us on the way and we took him to a hillock in the forests,” said Rakesh Kumar, one of the hostages.
He said that after taking Naved to a particular spot, they convinced him that he was safe. “A police party was moving some distance away and on spotting them, he got angry. He tried to open fire on us but I and another hostage overpowered him and during the scuffle, a bullet was fired,” said Kumar. “We detained him for half an hour till security men reached the spot and took him into custody,” Kumar added.
Naved during interrogation changed his name several times. First he said his name was Kasim Khan but later
changed his identity claiming he was Usman Khan. After two hours of sustained interrogation involving security and intelligence officials, he gave out his true identity and details of his family members in Pakistan. Top officials, who were watching Naved’s taped confession, said fidayeens like him are trained to give vague information if captured. But what most surprised the officials was Naved’s admissions on camera like, “I came to kill Hindus” and “It’s fun doing this (terrorist act)”.
“During the interrogation he disclosed that he and a group of four others had infiltrated through Kupwara around 45 days ago but they returned to PoK after the group couldn’t move further. This was their second attempt and like any fidayeen they had 6-7 hours life after launching a strike,” officials said. Interestingly, JuD also runs its terror shop from Faisalabad with its offshoot Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation.
Naved is the second LeT militant captured after Ajmal Kasab was nabbed, tried and hanged after the 2008 Mumbai attack.