Assam: ISI agent escapes custody

An agent of Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence, Nur ul Amin who was convicted for life by a Delhi court in the year 2002, on Monday gave police a slip while he was being brought for medical check up to Guwahati Medical College Hospital from Guwahati Central jail.

He escaped late in the afternoon by hoodwinking the lone Assam Police constable who had accompanied him to the hospital for check-up of a piles operation he had undergone two weeks ago.

A source in the jail said Amin alias Sajid alias Mainuddin, son of Hazarat Ali of village Gorgori in Assam's Nalbari district, was part of the Harkat-ul-Ansar group that had kidnapped an American and three British nationals in New Delhi in 1994 to secure release of Maulana Masood Azar. He was arrested from a Guwahati hotel in 1999.

He was later convicted for life by a Delhi court on April 27, 2002. Three Pakistanis involved in the Delhi abduction case were given death sentence, while Amin and two others were awarded life sentence.

The US citizen the group had abducted from Connaught Place in 1994 was Bela Joseph Naos and the three British nationals were Paul Benjamin Rideout, Rhys Curzel Partridge and Christopher Milis Gosten.

The group had abducted them to secure release of Maulana Masood Azar of Kandahar hijack drama notoriety. The abducted foreign nationals were later rescued from Ghaziabad by the police.

Amin, was trained by the Harkat-ul-Zehad-Al-Islami-Arakan in Bangladesh in handling of explosives.