M A I N   N E W S

Kashmiri medical student held in Delhi HC blast case
* Wasim studies in B’desh * Family contests NIA’s terror-link claim 
Jupinderjit Singh/TNS

Jammu/New Delhi, October 7
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested a Kashmiri medical student alleged to be a 'key link' in the conspiracy behind the Delhi High Court blast last month that left 15 people dead.

Wasim Akhtar Malik, a student of Unani medicine in Bangladesh, was produced before a Delhi court today and remanded to police custody for 14 days. He is said to have been quizzed about the whereabouts of Hizbul Mujahideen operative Junaid Akram, believed to be one of the key conspirators in the Delhi blast.

Investigators now suspect that the blast could have been the handiwork of the Pakistan-based Hizbul Mujahideen and not Harkat-ul-Jehad-Islami (HuJI) as believed earlier.

For the student’s family, his arrest has come as a bolt from the blue. He hails from a family of educationists, doctors, politicians and government officials. The family had also nabbed two militants last year.

The eldest son of Riaz-ul-Hassan Malik, a private secretary with National Hydro Power Corporation at Kishtwar, Wasim is one of the 10 students from the district studying in Bangladesh. His younger brother, Junaid Akram Malik has been missing since August 2010.

An uncle of the boys, Ashfaq Ahmed, claimed militants had kidnapped Junaid, a Class X student, from Jammu. “His whereabouts are still not known. HuJI militant Azhar Ali, known to recruit youngsters, was the suspected kidnapper. We nabbed him some days after the kidnapping and handed him over to the police. Since then, militants are threatening to kill our son. They also want us to withdraw the complaint against Azhar,” he said.

Kishtwar Additional SP Kulbir Singh confirmed the claims of the family. “It is true. They nabbed Azhar,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ashfaq claimed: “Wasim was not nabbed. The NIA requested us in writing that he was wanted for questioning in the Delhi case. We called him from Dhaka. He landed in New Delhi three days ago. Since then, he has been in police custody.”

(With agency inputs)