New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) Monday charged the chief of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, for his role in the Pahalgam terror attack last year.
An agency spokesperson said Saeed’s role has been explained in detail in the supplementary chargesheet filed before a special court in Jammu, emphasising the role of Pakistan-based outfits behind the attack. Saeed, the spokesperson, added, was charged both as chief of LeT and individually.
The supplementary charge sheet filed Monday comes six months after the agency filed a 1,597-page charge sheet detailing the sequence of events and conspiracy by Pakistan-based outfits, their leaders and foot soldiers before the killing of 26 people, including one local, at the Baisaran meadows in Anantnag’s Pahalgam block on 22 April, 2025.
“The (supplementary) charge sheet, filed in continuation of the original 1,597-page charge sheet, provides details of Pakistan’s conspiracy, Hafeez Saeed’s role, and supporting evidence collected by NIA in the case through meticulous scientific investigation and on-ground examination,” an NIA spokesperson said in a statement.
Saeed has featured in several dossiers handed out to the Pakistan government by India for his conspiracy and inflammatory speeches against India and its government. Saeed was also named as an accused and prime conspirator behind the terrorist attack in Mumbai in November 2008, killing more than 250 people.
The agency has identified The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy outfit of the Lashkar, as the outfit behind the Pahalgam attack. The TRF had taken responsibility for the killings shortly after the attack took place, but withdrew it later when faced with widespread outrage and global condemnation.
In its probe, the NIA had found that two posts linked to the TRF, the first claiming responsibility for the attack, and the second denying any role in the attack after global outrage and condemnation by the United Nations Security Council, were traced to Pakistan.
In its first charge sheet, filed in December 2025, contents of which were reported by ThePrint earlier, the NIA had documented that the first post appeared on the open-source microblogging platform ‘Mastodon’ at around 4.32 pm on 22 April, a couple of hours after the carnage. “It was pushed by a propaganda handle of TRF, a handle named ‘Kashmir Fight’, explicitly referring to the incident using the hashtag #PahalgamAttack.”
Later, on 25 April, the TRF used a newly created digital outlet called ‘TheResistanceFront Official’ to issue a denial, which the NIA has explained as “attempts of deniability by TRF and Pakistan”. While the first IP address was traced to Battagram city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the IP address used for the Telegram account to issue a denial was traced to Rawalpindi, and the account was registered using a Pakistani mobile phone number, the NIA alleged in its charge sheet.
The NIA had arrested two local ponywallahs—Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad Jothar—for helping the three terrorists with food and logistical support a day before the attack in April last year. The terrorist trio—Faisal Jatt alias Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran, and Hamza Afghani—were killed in an encounter at Dachigam forest on the outskirts of Srinagar in July last year.
Before the supplementary charge sheet naming Saeed, the NIA had named Pakistan-based Sajid Jutt as the mastermind behind the entire conspiracy. Originally a resident of Kulgam in Kashmir, Jatt fled across the border around 2006 and has remained in Pakistan ever since, according to the intelligence agencies.
(Edited by Viny Misshra)
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