Inspector General of Police (IGP) Jammu Zone, MK Sinha, on Monday said that ten militants are active in Kishtwar, 8 of them belonging to Hizb-Ul-Mujahideen and rest to Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), at the moment.
Sinha issued the statement while speaking to media personsabout the recovery of narcotics from a LoC village.
The IGP said that the smuggler held from LoC village witharound 12 kilograms of heroin was in contact with Hizb handlers across theborder.
Sharing details, the IGP said that on May 27 this year, onspecific information police in Jammu district laid a checkpoint at VivekanandaChowk and apprehended two persons from Kashmir Valley, identified as FayazAhmed Dar of Bijbehara Anantnag and Arshad Ahmed of Shopian.
He said that 216 grams of heroin and Rs 12,0,600 cash wasrecovered from the arrestees and then they were put to sustained interrogationand a 4-member SIT was constituted, which was headed by Amrit Pal Singh, SPNorth and supervised by SSP Jammu, Tejinder Singh.
During interrogation, the police officer said, “One of thearrestees, Arshad Ahmed made a revelation that there is a person by the name,Mohammad Altaf alias Hafiz of Behrooti, Kanga, a border village of Balakotesector in Mendhar, who was smuggling narcotics into India and was receiving theconsignment right on the border.”
The IGP Jammu said that the SIT members visited Behrooti,Kanga village and made a recovery of 12 kilograms of heroin.
He further said that from the interrogation of Arshad Ahmed,it came to fore that Fayaz Ahmed, the other arrestee, had gone to Pakistan inJanuary 2018.
Fayaz’s brother, Ayaz, according to the police officer is aPakistan-trained militant of Hizbul-Mujahidin and had infiltrated into J&K,operated there (J&K) and exfiltrated back to Pakistan. Ayaz is presentlyliving in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the IGP Jammu, MK Sinha added.
He said that there were two threads in the case-one relatedto recovery and arrest from Balakote village, that has been worked out and theother related to involvement of money is being investigated from Kashmir.
Sinha, the IGP Jammu said that four bank accounts, one inICICI bank, two in HDFC bank and one in J&K bank of Arshad have beenfrozen.
Asked if the money was used in militancy, the police officersaid, “We’re investigating that part. We’ve frozen bank accounts and trying tofind out where the money was used.
“But at this stage, I would not be convinced to say that themoney was actually used in militancy. Only I could say is- we’re investigatingthe use of money.”
About how the drug smugglers and their handlers were incontact with each other, the IGP Jammu said, “They were using Whatsapp and VoIPcalls.”