The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Tuesday, January 29, 2002, Chandigarh, India

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Two Pakistanis shot dead
ISI operating terrorist outfit in Hazaribagh

The body of one of the Pakistanis killed at Chirgaon village in Hazaribagh on Monday.
— PTI photo

Hazaribagh (Jharkhand), January 28
In a pre-dawn crackdown here the police today shot dead two Pakistani terrorists involved in the attack on American Center in Kolkata on January 22.

In New Delhi, Home Minister L.K. Advani confirmed that the two killed were Pakistanis. Home Secretary Kamal Pande later told newspersons that one of the two, Zahid, confessed to the crime and belonging to Khanewala district in Multan division of Pakistan before he succumbed to his injuries in the raid conducted by the police on the building in which they were hiding. The other one was identified as Salim, also from Pakistan.

One AK-47 believed to have been used in the incident in Kolkata was also seized from the spot.

Mr Pande said the hideout where these two persons had been staying was under surveillance as it was found that the duo had been missing from their rented flat between January 18 and 24. He added that it had also been established that these persons were linked to the ISI.

Meanwhile, an agency report from Islamabad said Pakistan derided Indian allegations that two men killed by the Indian police today were Pakistanis and that one of them had confessed before dying to being involved in last week’s attack on US offices in Kolkata. “It’s a joke, it’s a mockery,” Pakistan Government spokesman Syed Anwar Mahmood was quoted as claiming by the official APP news agency.

Mr Pande said intelligence information had become available about a terrorist module in Hazaribagh being run by Farhan Malik, alias Aftab Ahmed Ansari, who had claimed responsibility for the Kolkata incident in a phone call from Dubai. It had also become known that Farhan operated this terrorist module in conjunction with Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami and Lashkar-e-Toiba.

He said the External Affairs Ministry had just two days ago sent a request to the United Arab Emirates for the deportation of Farhan, who was formerly an underworld don from Varanasi.

Apart from the fact that all five terrorists in the attack on Parliament House on December 13 were Pakistanis, there had been at least five cases of subversion and espionage in recent months in which persons arrested in India on interrogation admitted to being Pakistani nationals who had been sent for sabotage and terrorism at the behest of Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

Mr Pande named two such Pakistani nationals: Nasir Ali arrested in Hyderabad on January 5 and Zeeshan Alam arrested in Jodhpur on December 17.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Chotanagpur division) Ashok Kumar Sinha said here that the two Pakistani terrorists belonged to the Lashkar-e-Toiba group.

Mr Sinha said the terrorists, Mohamad Zahid Sultan and Mohamad Salim, were aged 25. Both terrorists were residing in a rented house at Khirgaon in Hazaribagh town after the attack on the Center in Kolkata, he added.

The local police, led by Superintendent of Police Deepak Verma along with a team from Delhi and Kolkata, cordoned off the house at around 0230 am in a special drive. After waiting for over two-and-a-half hours, the terrorists were asked to surrender but they started firing with AK-47 leading to an encounter.

Mr Sinha said huge firearms and cash, apart from incriminating documents, were seized from the house. The bodies of the terrorists had been sent for autopsy. A Ranchi report says the Pakistani nationals were tracked by the Delhi police who went to Hazaribagh after receiving information from their counterparts in Kolkata.

An alert has been sounded in Jharkhand in the wake of the killing of the Pakistani terrorists in Hazaribagh and yesterday’s landmine blast in which nine policemen were killed in Gumla district. UNI

Check overstay of Pakistanis: Centre
S. Satyanarayanan
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 28
The growing trend of direct involvement of Pakistani nationals in terrorism, espionage and subversive activities in the country has prompted the Centre to issue a fresh direction to the state police and Central agencies to intensify their drive against Pakistan nationals overstaying or illegally staying here.

The direction issued by the Union Home Ministry recently has asked immediate identification of Pakistani nationals overstaying in the country and also to identify and take necessary action against those staying illegally.

Apart from the fact that all five terrorists who attacked Parliament on December 13, 2001, were Pakistanis, there have been at least five cases of subversion and espionage in the recent months in which Pakistani nationals were arrested in India and they, during interrogation, themselves admitted that they were Pakistanis and had been sent to India for sabotage and terrorism at the behest of Pakistan’s ISI.

The two persons, who enacted the January 22 Kolkata attack outside the American Center - Zahid and Salim -have also been identified as Pakistani nationals.

Subsequently, another Pakistani national Zeeshan Alam was held at Jodhpur. Yesterday, a Pakistani national, Ashique Ali, a native of Kasimabad tehsil in Pakistan, was arrested in Hyderabad on charges of spying for the ISI.