New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed its charge sheet in the Pahalgam terror attack case before a special court in Jammu Monday, highlighting “Pakistan’s conspiracy” in a gory ambush that left 25 tourists and a local resident dead.
It has named The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as the organisation that carried out the attack and charged its Pakistan-based handler Sajid Jatt as a prime accused in the case. The TRF had initially claimed responsibility for the attack, and then retracted its claim days later.
“The charge sheet, which details Pakistan’s conspiracy, roles of the accused, and supporting evidence in the case, has charged the banned LeT/TRF as a legal entity for its role in planning, facilitating, and executing the Pahalgam attack. The attack, which involved religion-based targeted killings by the Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, left 25 tourists and one local civilian dead,” an NIA spokesperson said in a statement, adding that a total of seven people have been charged in the case.
“The NIA, through a meticulous scientific probe spanning the past almost 8 months, had traced the conspiracy in the case to Pakistan, which has been unabatedly sponsoring terrorism against India,” the spokesperson further said.
The Pahalgam terror attack, which took place on 22 April this year, was one of the deadliest in the Kashmir Valley in recent years. The terrorists singled out tourists after checking their ID cards, took them hostage and opened indiscriminate fire using AK-47s and M4 carbines. The carnage lasted 30 to 40 minutes.
A fortnight after the attack, India targeted 9 terror complexes across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as part of its Operation Sindoor. After 87 hours of conflict, India and Pakistan reached a bilateral understanding on 10 May to cease firing across the land, the sea and the air.
Among the seven accused named in the 1,597-page charge sheet are two locals from Pahalgam—Parvaiz Ahmad and Bashir Ahmad Jothatd—who were arrested on 22 June and have been in judicial custody since.
The counter-terrorism agency, which had taken over the case from the Jammu and Kashmir Police, has also charged three Pakistani terrorists identified as Faisal Jatt alias Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran, and Hamza Afghani, who were killed by security forces during Operation Mahadev at the Dachigam forest on the outskirts of Srinagar.
The NIA had collected evidence, including Pakistani contact numbers, some Facebook IDs, photographs and Aadhar cards from the mobile phones of the dead terrorists, which allegedly incriminated Jothatd and Ahmed.
Sources in the agency suggested that forensic analysis reports of several recovered materials, such as arms and ammunition, blankets, shawls and bed sheets—prepared by the National Forensic Sciences University as well as the Central Forensic Science Laboratory—have been included in the charge sheet. The NIA collected at least 20 exhibits from the attack site, as well as from where the terrorists took shelter after, for examination.
For corroboration of the evidence gathered during investigation, NIA officials, on the orders of the Jammu special court, had also questioned the duo who allegedly sheltered the terrorists for three hours on 18 October. The agency had taken the duo into custody for 24 hours last month as well.
Pakistan-based handler and prime accused Sajid Jatt, originally hailing from Kulgam in South Kashmir, has relocated to Changa Manga village in Kasur district of Pakistan, according to intelligence agency sources, who added that Jatt joined the Lashkar in 1998 and was active in the Yaripora area of Kulgam district at the time.
Around the same time, he developed a relationship with a local woman and married her in 2005. His wife gave birth to a son in 2006, but soon after, Jatt crossed the border and left for Pakistan, never to return, the sources added.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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