Pak ultra Wali named accused in Kerala terror case

The NIA has named Pakistani terror operative “Wali” Abdul Rehman as 24th accused in the case pertaining to recruitment of Keralite youths to the LeT for training in Kashmir. Wali was listed as an accused in the interim probe report the agency filed on the case on Tuesday in the Special CBI Court-2 (NIA court) in Kochi.

The agency told the court that the investigation was progressing in various categories and at different levels but the court launched an inquiry on its own to remove the confusion prevailing over the identities of the four Malayalees killed by security forces in Kashmir two years ago. The court would take up the case again on November 30

Wali was made an accused resultant to investigations into the sources of funds of terror operatives in Kerala and other parts of India and several other aspects of the LeT operations, the NIA said. This was the first time a Pakistani citizen was being listed as an accused in a terror case in Kerala.

The interim report confirmed the links of the terror recruitment case, in which LeT’s South India commander Thadiyanatavide Nazeer, prime accused in Bangalore bombings case, was one of the key accused, with Pakistani ultras. The NIA had taken over the probe into the recruitment from the special anti-terror team of the Kerala Police last December.

According to the NIA, Wali had sneaked into India from Pakistan through the Kashmir border five years ago and had organized terror recruitment camps in Hyderabad, Ajmer, Delhi and other places with the help of Nazeer and Sarfaraz Nawaz, the Oman-based Malayalee fund-raiser and an accused in the Bangalore blasts case.

The agency told the court that Wali had been involved in several offences including conspiracy. The agency did not rule out the possibility of more Pak citizens becoming accused in the case. Nazeer had earlier told the Karnataka Police that Wali had played a pivotal role in the Bangalore bombings.

The NIA submitted in the court the photographs and other details of the four Malayalee militants killed in encounter with security forces in Kashmir but the defendants argued that this did not confirm the identity of the persons or whether they were indeed killed.

They termed the reports of encounter with security forces in Kashmir as false and pointed out that the NIA itself had scientifically confirmed only two deaths. The NIA had on October 15 admitted in the court that the identities of two of those killed in Kashmir were yet to be scientifically confirmed.

The agency had told the court that it had confirmed the identities of militants Muhammad Fayaz of Kannur and Abdul Rahim of Parappanangadi, through finger print comparison. But the other two killed – Muhammad Faisy and Muhammad Yassin alias Varghese Joseph – could not be formally identified.

As the defendants persisted in this argument, the court said it would hold a separate enquiry into this. It decided to take detailed statements of the parents and other relatives of the militants killed in Kashmir. It would also collect the statements of the witnesses who had identified the persons from the pictures.

The probe into the recruitment of young Keralites to the LeT network for training in Kashmir was initiated by the Kerala Police based at Edakkad station in Kannur depending on the reports from authorities in Kashmir that four Malayalee militants had been killed in an encounter in October, 2008.

In fact this was the one incident that led to the various investigations into the now-obvious extensive terror network in Kerala. The NIA had last December taken over the probe into this case along with five others in Kerala to the displeasure of the Kerala Home Department.

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