NIA arrests JeM operative for 2016 Nagrota camp attack

NEW DELHI: One and a half years after three fidayeen attackers of Maulana Masood Azhar-led Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) attacked Army’s Nagrota camp in November 2016, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Saturday claimed a breakthrough in the case with the arrest of a Kupwara resident, Muneer ul Hassan Qadri. Seven army personnel, including two officers, were killed in the attack.

It is also for the first time that an agency is officially naming JeM for the attack. Earlier, only intelligence agencies had stated that the outfit was behind the attack. Masood Azhar, in a weekly magazine of the outfit published in December 2016 claimed that Nagrota attack was carried out by five members of JeM’s Afzal Guru squad, out of which two managed to escape.

NIA officials said that Qadri, an old JeM operative, had got directions from Pakistan in November last year to assist a fidayeen group to attack the Nagrota camp. Qadri, a Nepal returnee who was in custody of the police for some time, had told his interrogators about his role in various terror modules, including the group involved in the Nagrota attack.

An NIA spokesman, while appreciating the role of J&K Police, said, Qadri, a resident of Lolab in north Kashmir, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the terror attack on the Army camp on November 29, 2016. Three Pakistani terrorists were killed in the operation and a huge quantity of firearms and ammunition, explosives and other articleswere seized, he said.

Preliminary interrogation revealed that the attack was carried out by the JeM, a banned terror group, in furtherance of a well-planned conspiracy from Pakistan, the spokesman said. Qadri has claimed that he along with other Valleybased JeM operatives was in touch with the JeM leadership in Pakistan and had received a freshly infiltrated group of three Pakistani terrorists from the Samba sector a day before the attack.

They subsequently stayed at a hotel in Jammu and then left the attackers outside the Army camp in Nagrota late at night, and proceeded to the Kashmir Valley, the spokesman said. The Indian government has been desperately trying to include Azhar on the UN Security CounciSC’s 1267 sanctions list. JeM was already proscribed by the UNSC in 2001 for its terror activities and links to the al-Qaeda. India’s efforts have been so far vetoed by China.