New Delhi: Indian intelligence agency sources allege the mastermind behind 26/11 attacks and LeT operations chief, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, directed a two-year-old terror outfit’s key operative, Abdul Rehman, to create in India, a terror-sponsoring platform, a la Pakistan's Jamat-ud-Dawa, to encourage jihad over emotive issues.
Rehman — the alleged key recruiter of Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), charge-sheeted in June by Delhi police’s special cell — was asked by Sajid Mir, an associate of Lakhvi and alleged 26/11 plotter, to send fresh recruits for terror training in Pakistan. He was also assured of unlimited funding. It is alleged Rehman met Lakhvi and Mir during a trip to Pakistan in early 2015, and had an ISI escort to help him evade registration formalities at Karachi airport.
Subsequently, he was trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) facility. Barely two years after its formation in Pakistan — which was announced through a videotape in September 2014 by Al Qaeda chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri — the AQIS began challenging Indian counter-terror agencies.
A source from intelligence said, “AQIS presents a challenge in terms of its ability to recruit gullible men from disparate backgrounds and provide them access to training-cum-funding resources from its Pakistani sponsors.”
Recently, an alleged associate of Rehman, Dr Sabeel Ahmed, was detained in Saudi Arabia, as confirmed by authorities, and faces deportation to India even as intelligence agencies track one of AQIS’s top operatives who is absconding — a Mumbai-born man known as “Imran”.
Delhi police's special cell in June charge-sheeted 17 AQIS operatives; of which, five were arrested including Rehman whereas the remaining 12 have been absconding, including Dr Ahmed and AQIS’s Pakistan-based chief, Sana-ul Haq alias Maulana Umar, a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district. The charge-sheet alleged that AQIS was trying to establish a terror base in the country, especially in western UP, and carry out terror attacks.
According to a source, AQIS’s threat comes at a time when Pakistan-based alleged sponsors of terror in India, especially ISI and LeT, are supposedly pitting it as an alternative to a similar terror outfit that has trained a significant number of Indian members i.e. Indian Mujahideen (IM). While key IM operatives such as Yasin Bhatkal were nabbed, a few others have reportedly evinced interest in joining the combat in Syria and Afghanistan. Accordingly, two IM operatives allegedly met Haq in 2014, asking him to take over IM's reins.
“ISI and LeT are sponsoring activities of the AQIS in India since its inception two years ago, and are taking care of its training and funding requirements. LeT and ISI have also provided sanctuary to AQIS's top absconding leadership at locations including Miranshah in federally administered tribal Pakistan,” said the source.
