New Delhi: Even as India’s National Investigation Agency is preparing to share information about an official working in the Pakistan high commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka, allegedly playing a key role in planning terror strikes in the southern part of the country, its press attache Muhammad Daud Ehtisham was quoted as saying that Pakistan and its state institutions are responsible entities and do not indulge in such activities.
Using the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) signed with Sri Lanka, India is using diplomatic channels to share the information that names Amir Zubair Siddiqui, consular (visa) in the Pakistani mission in Sri Lanka, as the main conspirator. Sources said he was allegedly involved in a conspiracy with some Lankan nationals for carrying out terror attacks on the US consulate in Chennai and Israeli consulate in Bengaluru.
Siddiqui is not a new name for IB as his name had cropped up in 2012-13 when security agencies picked up Tameem Ansari, a frequent flyer between Tiruchy and Colombo. Ansari was arrested after six months of surveillance in 2012. A small exporter to Sri Lanka, Ansari was in touch with Haji, a Tamil- speaking Muslim from Colombo. However, after his business failed, Haji allegedly introduced him to Siddiqui, and his second in command, Shaji.
After reportedly brainwashing him, Siddiqui roped him to take videos of the Nagapattinam port and Mallipattinam, traditionally a landing point. His name again figured after IB, on a tip-off from its Malaysian counterparts, foiled an attempt by ISI to carry out terror attacks on the two foreign consulates in India.
Sakir Hussian, the Sri Lanka national arrested on a tip-off from the Intelligence Bureau and accused of carrying out reconnaissance of the two consulates, spilt the beans. He told interrogators that he had been hired by Siddiqui as per alleged ISI plans to conduct the reconnaissance.
The case was eventually transferred to NIA. Hussian told interrogators that the Pakistani spy agency was planning to send two men from the Maldives to Chennai and that he had to arrange for their travel documents and hideouts. Sleuths had recovered pictures of the US and Israeli consulates, the sources said, and claimed that these pictures had been mailed to his alleged handlers in Pakistan and its Colombo high commission.
Cyber signatures showed that the pictures were downloaded in a computer within the premises of the high commission and had been shared with Lankan authorities, the sources claimed. Now, under MLAT, Lankan authorities have been asked to share their probe details.
Lankan authorities were carrying out a probe at their end besides corroborating the versions of Hussian and another accomplice of his, Mohammed Hussain Mohammed Sulaiman, arrested by Malaysian authorities who stumbled upon the plot.
