Hijack: Terror suspect knew of plan weeks before

The December 1999 Kandahar hijack executed by the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen’s (HuM) terrorists may have stumped India’s security agencies, but not Mohammed Abdul Rehman Kasmi from Cuttack. Kasmi, who was arrested recently by Delhi police’s special cell, has revealed in the course of his interrogation that a Pakistani associate of Maulana Masood Azhar had divulged information to him about the arrival of 10 of Azhar’s key men in Nepal to infiltrate into India and secure the release of the JeM chief who was then incarcerated in a J&K prison.

Rehman was a 22-year-old PhD student in Arabic language at an educational institution in Uttar Pradesh (UP) when the incident occurred. Rehman went into hiding after the incident and subsequently ran a school via a trust in Cuttack while recruiting Indians for terror training in Pakistan. The Pakistan-trained Rehman was recently chargesheeted for his alleged terror activities by Delhi police’s special cell after he was netted in an operation conducted with a central internal intelligence agency for his alleged role as a “a member of the al Qaeda in Indian Sub continent (AQIS)” and “co-ordinator” between the group and the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT).

“During his interrogation, Rehman confessed he had known a few weeks prior to the Kandahar hijacking that a group of 10 HuM men had taken flights from Pakistan to Nepal and were subsequently trying to infiltrate into India to secure the forcible release of their leader Masood Azhar,” said a counter-terror source.

Azhar was then lodged in an Indian prison. Rehman, who has been interrogated by several counter-terror agencies to examine his claims, revealed that “it was a Pakistani HuM operative named Salim who had told him that he was in India as part of the HuM mission to free Azhar,” said the source.

On December 24, 1999, masked HuM men had hijacked Indian Airlines’ New Delhi-bound IC 814 aircraft when it left Kathmandu and entered the Indian airspace. The aircraft had 179 passengers with 11 crew members and was eventually taken to Kandahar. The BJP-led NDA government had to release three terrorists — Azhar, Al Umar chief Mushtaq Zargar and Omar Sayeed Sheikh, who was later convicted in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl — for the release of the passengers and the crew.

“Abdul Rehman revealed that a few weeks before the Kandahar hijack took place, Pakistani national Salim had met him with a few locals at a UP-based educational institution,” he said. “Gradually, Salim began trusting Rehman, since he used to listen to audio-tapes containing Azhar’s speeches, and then divulged about the HuM operation to free Azhar,” said the source.

According to Salim, as per Rehman’s version that has been shared with a Delhi court, the former had arrived in Delhi as part of the HuM plot while he had “directed” 10 of his associates to reach Nepal via air route and were already there as part of the plot.

According to Rehman, Salim claimed he had fought in Afghanistan to free it of the Russian occupation in the eighties and had “worked under “al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 attacks in the US.”

Rehman told his interrogators that Salim had claimed that “Masood Azhar was in jail and therefore jihad is down and he has prepared 10 boys for the release of Masood Azhar.” Days before the hijacking, Salim had disappeared after meeting Rehman at least four times.

Salim died in a police encounter with the Uttar Pradesh police in 2001 in Lucknow, along with two other JeM Pakistani operatives, while on a mission to attack a target per Azhar’s directions, according to Rehman’s revelations.

After a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation, a trial court had in February 2008 sentenced Abdul Latif, Dalip Kumar and Yusuf Nepali to life imprisonment for their indirect role in the hijack conspiracy. Seven Pakistani HuM operatives — Ibrahim Athar, Sunny Qazi, Shahid Akhtar, Zahoor Mistry, Shakir and Azhar’s relatives Yusuf Azhar and Abdul Rauf — were chargesheeted for their direct role in the hijacking, but are absconding.

JeM had allegedly orchestrated the Parliament attack in December 2001 and the Pathankot airbase in January 2016.