Grenade thrower woman arrested; terror groups using female OGWs to carry out attacks
STATE TIMES NEWS
SRINAGAR: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh each on four wanted terrorists of The Resistance Front (TRF), a front organisation of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), operating in Jammu and Kashmir.
The four terrorists, including two Pakistani nationals, are wanted by the NIA in connection with a case registered last year in connection with a conspiracy hatched for radicalising, motivating and recruiting youths of Jammu & Kashmir to effect violent activities in the Union territory and rest of India, a spokesperson of the agency said.
The case was registered under various sections of Indian Penal Code and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The cash reward was declared against Pakistani nationals Saleem Rehmani alias ‘Abu Saad’ of Nawab Shah, Sindh and Saifullah Sajid Jatt of Shangamanga in Kasur and their local associates Sajjad Gul of Srinagar and Basit Ahmad Dar of Redwani Payeen in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district.
Sharing their pictures, the NIA said, “the identity of the informer (leading to the arrest of the wanted terrorists) shall be kept secret.”
Meanwhile, the petrol bomb attack by a burqa-clad woman on a security force bunker in Sopore town has highlighted the desperation of terror groups in seeking services of women over ground workers for carrying out subversive activities in the valley, officials said.
According to the officials, the woman, identified as Hasina Akhtar from Baramulla area of north Kashmir, allegedly came in contact with pro-Pakistan separatist Asiya Andrabi, already in jail for terror funding case registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), during 2008.
The woman, covered in a burqa, was captured in CCTV footage hurling the petrol bomb at the security bunker in Sopore on Tuesday evening. There was no injury in the incident and she managed to escape.
The woman was caught on CCTV installed at various places across the valley and later her identity was established after police talked to various sources spread across the apple-town of Sopore as well as adjacent Handwara district.
The 38-year-old Akhtar has two cases registered against her which included one in 2021 for pasting posters of banned Lashker-e-Taiba terror group in Handwara of north Kashmir.
Officials said that terror groups, facing heat from the security forces, have now been engaging women over ground workers for carrying out their nefarious designs which include hurling grenades or acting as couriers.
A class 10 passout from Hanafia school, Akhtar was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police in 2021. She is out on bail since December last year.
Several raids were carried out and Sopore police was actively working on nabbing her.
She was, however, arrested by Sopore Police, Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) Vijay Kumar said, adding, there are three FIRs registered under UAPA against her.
He told PTI that she had been working as an over ground worker of LeT.
“We have been noticing employing of women by terror group of late. Last year, two burka-clad women assisted terrorists in an attack on residential guard of a BJP worker in the outskirts of Srinagar city at Nowgam in which we lost one policeman.
“Some more such women are on police’s radar and we have been handling with them professionally,” the IGP said.