ThePrint Exclusive: Government ID cards, family testimony nail Pakistan links of Pahalgam killers

The Print

2 days ago

This week, though, hard evidence emerged from the bodies of the three terrorists killed in Kashmir's Dachigam, firmly establishing ties between the perpetrators of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan and the Lashkar. Two of three terrorists alleged to have carried out the attack in Pahalgam, intelligence sources told ThePrint, carried copies of their digital Pakistan government-issued identification, enabling their precise identification with stored biometric information.
There was no one, back in the summer of 1998, seeking vengeance for Leela's sindoor. The then Union home minister Lal Krishna Advani had promised to punish the perpetrators of the wedding procession massacre at Chapnari, among the first in a series of communal mass killings that have claimed the lives of more than 700 Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir. The prosecution of men accused of involvement in the massacre, though, collapsed for want of evidence.
New Delhi: Leela Devi was sitting by the side of the bullet-riddled body of her husband of one day, Khem Raj, when the police finally arrived, clutching the only thing that remained of her marriage—Khem Raj's cheap rubber sandals. The body of the second bridegroom killed that day, Leela's brother Sesh Ram, who had been married to Dugdi Devi three days earlier, lay nearby. There were over 20 others dead, all members of the wedding procession from the hamlet of Kadal, who were accompanying another of Leela's brothers, Om Parkash, to his wedding at Korda.
Evidence independently obtained by ThePrint also shows the Government of Pakistan has been aware of ongoing terrorist operations by the Lashkar and Jaish-e-Muhammad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but has done nothing to shut them down.
The evidence of involvement of Pakistani nationals in Pahalgam, a senior Indian intelligence official told ThePrint, will enable India to push the international community harder for action against top jihadist leaders, like Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Masood Azhar Alvi. 'The Pahalgam investigation shows that Pakistan-based terrorist groups have not only been involved in these killings,' he said, 'but that the government has been lying when it tells the international community that they have been shut down.'
Following threats of sanctions by the multinational Financial Action Task Force, Pakistan had jailed some senior jihadists alleged to have links to the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. The country also promised action to end operations by the Lashkar and Jaish, which it had earlier proscribed. The NIA's evidence shows that the promise has been flagrantly violated.
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Killers in the database
Evidence now gathered by India centres around national identification cards, issued by Pakistan's National Database Registration Authority or NADRA, to two of the terrorists killed in the Dachigam forests—cards mistakenly described by Union Home Minister Amit Shah as election identification cards in Parliament this week. The NADRA card system is the equivalent of India's Aadhaar cards, linked to a database with biometric information. Each card entry also holds geographical information on the holder, their family and cellphone records.
The NADRA cards show that one of the perpetrators was Habib Tahir, from the village of Koiyan near Khaigala in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—a former college student who dropped out of college in Rawalakot. Long involved with the Jama'at-e-Islami political party, local WhatsApp messages circulated among Jam'aat cadre in Khaigala and obtained by ThePrint show, Tahir then joined the Jama'at-ud-Dawa, the parent organisation of the Lashkar.
Family sources told ThePrint that the Lashkar chief in Rawalakot, Rizwan Anees, had called Tahir's brother, who works in Saudi Arabia, to tell him of the firefight in Dachigam, where troops of the 4 Paracommando Regiment shot dead the Pahalgam perpetrators on 28 July.
The following day, Rizwan visited the family in Koiyan, the family said, and asked to conduct a memorial prayer service for the slain terrorists. However, the terrorist's maternal uncles, Asif Akram and Jannat Akram, demanded that Rizwan leave the village, the family told ThePrint. 'Asif and Jannat said that the Lashkar was responsible for brainwashing their nephew and sending him to his death,' a witness said. 'There was an argument with Rizwan and his guards, which ended in a scuffle.'
The second NADRA card—which was stored on a high-frequency encrypted communication device used by the terrorists—identifies the second perpetrator as Bilal Afzal. The card, seen by ThePrint, bears numbers suggesting Afzal was a resident of the Lahore area, and his father's name is Muhammad Afzal.
Afzal is believed to have operated in Kashmir for several years under the code-name Suleman Shah, carrying out a succession of operations in last year's killings of construction workers in Gagangir.
The three men, according to two Indian intelligence officials, were part of several teams operating under the command of Sajid Saifullah Jatt, a senior Lashkar operative who served in south Kashmir's Kulgam for several years from 2005. Sajid is believed to live in the village of Changa Manga near Lahore, with his ethnic-Kashmiri wife.
Pakistan govt complicity
Even though Pakistan's government has repeatedly claimed to have ended the operations of the LeT and JeM, documents obtained by ThePrint show both groups have continued to hold public functions in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Three days before the Lashkar terrorists were killed in Dachigam, Jaish commanders in Bairmang had asked local administrators to do a Ghaibana Namaz, or funeral rites conducted without the presence of a dead body, for a terrorist killed in Kashmir.
Led by Noman Shahzad, the JeM's head in the Pakistan-occupied district of Bagh, the organisation had requested District Magistrate Raja Muhammad Zulfiqar Khan for permission to hold Ghaibana Namaz. A letter signed by Khan on 26 July had denied permission for the rally on the grounds that personnel displaying weapons might disturb the peace. Following the district administration's orders, the Jaish held a small prayer meeting in Barmang, residents told ThePrint. However, weapons were not allowed to be displayed.
The district magistrate's letter, though, establishes that Pakistan is aware that proscribed jihadist groups continue to send operatives to engage in violence in Kashmir, but chooses not to crack down even after the Pahalgam massacre.
Last year, ThePrint had reported the Lashkar's announcement of a Ghaibana Namaz for Lashkar terrorists Abdul Wahab, also known by the alias Abu Saifullah, and Sanam Jafar, who were killed near Sopore in north Kashmir in a firefight with Indian forces. The Lashkar had claimed Wahab was the fifth resident of Barmang to be killed fighting with the group in Kashmir. The terrorist group called the slain men 'great warriors who were martyred fighting the tyrannical Indian Army'.
Video obtained by ThePrint also showed armed Jaish cadre firing shots in the air at a Ghaibana Namaz for slain terrorist Hafiz Mohammad Arsalan in 2022.
Lashkar leader Naseer Ahmad told a gathering in Muridke, held soon before the Pahalgam massacre, that 'the ideological offspring of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed will continue his jihad'. Earlier, Lashkar co-founder Amir Hamza, internationally sanctioned for his role in raising terrorism funding, delivered a sermon in Murdike urging 'jihad against the infidels'.
Local Lashkar leader Rizwan Hanif, speaking in Khaigala, close to Pahalgam attacker Tahir's village, urged followers to prepare for 'our jihad against the cow-worshippers'.
Failed investigation in previous cases
Lack of evidence, like the NADRA cards, has previously led to the investigation of massacres of Hindus in the Jammu region being stonewalled. The investigation into the wedding procession in Chapnari illustrated the problems. Abid Husain, known by the code name Abu Maaz, the LeT commander held responsible for the massacre and two other mass killings of Hindus that summer at Sarawan and Chhana-Thackrai, was shot dead in 1999. There was no hard evidence, however, to link him to Pakistan or the Lashkar.
Five Indian nationals from the Doda area were prosecuted for their role in enabling the massacre, but all were acquitted for lack of evidence. Local resident Farooq Ahmed, arrested in 1998 but acquitted in 2006, left the village of Kastigarh soon after, and is now believed to be living in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, police say. Abdul Qayoom Hajam, Mohammad Rafiq and Ataullah Mohammad, all residents of the hamlet of Bhatta Deesa, were also arrested in 1998, but again acquitted.
'Even the persons, who in fact had disclosed the names of the accused, did not support the case of the prosecution and specifically denied their involvement in the occurrence,' the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had recorded while acquitting the accused. 'They went to the extent of saying that the accused facing the trial were not the assailants.'
Local resident Manzoor Ahmad Gujjar was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly assisting another Lashkar-e-Taiba massacre—the killing of 22 children, women and men at the village of Prankote in April 1998. Later, though, the high court had acquitted Manzoor, saying there was 'no evidence to connect him with the alleged occurrence'. Manzoor, however, continued to be held under preventive detention laws, on the grounds that he was a threat to the security of the state. The high court, however, ordered his release in 2007.
The most egregious failure to secure justice was in the case of the massacre of 36 Sikh residents of the village of Chattisinghpora in Kashmir on the eve of a visit by then-United States President Bill Clinton. Lashkar operative Muhammad Suhail Malik, who had confessed to the media to killing 36 Sikh residents of Chattisinghpora, was acquitted for lack of evidence and repatriated to Pakistan in 2015.
'All these cases had to be investigated by police, who had no access to suspects across the Line of Control, nor assistance from Pakistani authorities,' an official involved in the Doda investigation told ThePrint. 'The fact that we finally have hard evidence will hopefully lead the international community to step up and pressure Pakistan.'
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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