Terrorist Bahadur Ali: I am from Pakistan, was sent here to kill Indians

Bahadur Ali

New Delhi: Armed with the confessional statement of an alleged Pakistani LeT operative, NIA yesterday blamed the banned terror organisation for fuelling the continuing unrest in Kashmir.

The National Investigation Agency said the questioning of Pakistani terrorist Bahadur Ali, who was captured on July 25 from a village in Handwara in North Kashmir, had thrown up leads showing involvement of LeT in aggravating the situation in Kashmir.

"NIA is further investigating the role of Lashkar in the present unrest in Kashmir," Inspector General of NIA Sanjeev Singh said.

NIA also revealed a video of Ali alias Saifullah, a Punjabi-speaking man, talking about his family, the time he spent in the terror outfit and how he crossed over to the Indian side of the border.

Ali told interrogators he was told by his handlers from a control room code-named ‘Alpha-3', believed to be located at a high altitude in PoK, about the unrest in the Valley following the killing of Burhan Wani.

His handlers from the control room asked him to throw grenades at security forces and also informed him that other cadres of the terror group had managed to sneak into the Valley, mingled with protesters at other places and were fuelling tension in the Valley.

Ali, according to Singh, told the interrogators that LeT commander from Muzzafarabad, controls the movement of militants in India. "I was asked to throw grenades during a protest but I couldn't," Ali says in the video.

This is for the first time that NIA has shown a video statement of a captured militant. "Highly technically qualified people have done the modification of their radio set and trained them, including Bahadur Ali. NIA is collecting evidence that will stand international judicial scrutiny and will share it with Pakistan for further action," Singh said.