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5 ISI agents arrested in Delhi

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

A team of the special branch of the Delhi police led by Assistant Commissioner L N Rao arrested five agents of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence when they were about to exchange a large amount of foreign exchange through an illegal channel.

One of the arrested men is Farooq Ahmed Kanoon, a resident of Harsibhat Rainwari, Srinagar. Three others are residents of the capital -- Manish Thakur, of Tagore Garden Extension, Shyam Lal, of Mandawali, and Jagdeep Kumar, of Pratap Nagar. While these four were arrested on February 24 on Church Mission Road at Fatehpuri in Delhi, the fifth man, Ashiq Hussain Paktoo, was arrested on February 27.

Giving details, Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said the arrest of the five subversives had led to the recovery of a large cache of explosive substances and timer pencils. "We have busted a major havala [illegal forex] channel of funding the Kashmiri militants through the arrest of these people," he said.

According to ACP Rao, Kanoon disclosed on interrogation that he had been sent to collect money from Delhi by Sabir Khan and Nazir Khan. "Sabir and Nazir are activists of Lashkar-e-Toiba. During the raid more than Rs 4.5 million in cash were recovered from the four men arrested on February 24.

Ashiq Hussain Paktoo is a Pakistan-trained terrorist who joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in 1990. Later, he joined Junyat-e-Mujahideen and became its publicity chief. Paktoo was arrested in 1993 for hatching a criminal conspiracy to murder human rights activist Hriday Nath Wanchoo. He was released on bail in 1999 and soon joined the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Thereafter he travelled to London to organise money for terrorist activities. There, he met senior officials of the ISI and the Pakistani government and was directed to help escalate violence in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Rao told rediff.com

According to the police, Ashiq and Nazir had got a huge sum of money from ISI agents in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to carry out subversive activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

They said Paktoo also disclosed that he had hidden a large quantity of explosives in his house in Srinagar. A police team led by Inspector Jai Singh recovered 5kg of RDX, 2 timer pencils and other material from there. Paktoo's wife Asiyah Inderabi is also being interrogated, though she has not been formally arrested yet.

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