JeM chief Masood Azhar. (File)

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet Tuesday against Pakistan-based chief of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit, Moulana Masood Azhar, and 19 others for planning and carrying out a suicide attack on a CRPF convoy killing 40 para military personnel in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district in 2019.

The investigating agency solved the “blind case” after joining together the electronic evidence, besides statements of terrorists and their sympathisers arrested in different cases from time to time, sources said.

The accused named in the over 13,000 page chargesheet include people arrested from Pulwama for providing logistics, including shelter and shooting the last video of the suicide bomber Adil Dar, who rammed the nearly 200 kgs explosive laden vehicle into the CRPF convoy on February 14 last year at Lethpora Pulwama.

Referring to the investigations in the case, the chargesheet also takes the lid of the use of e-commerce platforms by the terror module in purchasing the high-end batteries, phones and chemicals for use in carrying out the attack. Seven people, including Umar Farooq, a nephew of Masood Azhar, have been killed. Umar had come to Kashmir after allegedly crossing the international border in Jammu’s Samba district in 2018.

The remaining four accused in the chargesheet include Masood Azhar, his brother Abdula Rauf and a relative Ammar Alvi, besides a local of Kashmir. Of them, two including the local are stated to be hiding in Kashmir.