Indian student enrolled in Pakistan, his father charge-sheeted for terror activities, spying

SRINAGAR: The Special Investigation Agency (SIA), a unit carved out of the Jammu and Kashmir police has filed a charge sheet against three persons including an Indian student enrolled in a Pakistani university and his father for indulging in terror activities and passing across the border information about army units.

Officials said this was another example of Pakistan misusing higher studies as bait for recruitment in terror groups. Already 17 youths who had gone to Pakistan for studies, have been killed at the Line of Control while infiltrating into Kashmir, or during security forces’ encounters with terror outfits, they said. The charge sheet was filed against student Asif Shabir Naik, a resident of Kashtigarh in Doda, his father Shabir Hussain Naik, and Safdar Hussain (the latter two currently in Pakistan) under various sections of the anti-terror law, officials said.

The SIA has also invoked the legal tool of Letters Rogatory wherein the Pakistani court of law would be approached through the competent Indian court seeking Pakistan's assistance in providing information about the charge-sheeted individuals. "Even if the prospects of a positive response are bleak, the SIA would not leave a single legal stone unturned,” said a senior officer of the agency. Asif Shabir Naik was given a cover as a student of the International Islamic University in Islamabad in a mass communication programme, but actually, he was working in the media cell of the banned terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, the officials said. He was intercepted at the Srinagar airport based on intelligence inputs that he had been visiting Pakistan posing as a student studying there. However, according to the officials, he had been visiting terrorist and separatist training facilities.

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The case has shown how Pakistani agencies have been brazenly and egregiously misusing not only the travel between the two countries based on valid travel documents but also the Indian students going to Pakistan for higher studies, the officials said. Investigations show that the terrorist outfit Hizbul Mujahideen gave the cover of studentship to Naik but used his stay in Pakistan to meet his father, who heads the media wing of the banned terror outfit, besides providing him training in sabotage and subversion, they said. His phone's forensic examinations showed he had video graphed army installations along the Baramula-Srinagar Road. He had also photographed the access road to the airport and security features adjacent to it, the officials said. Naik was issued a visitor's visa, but immigration records indicated he was a student, they said. While Naik has been arrested in the case and is currently in judicial custody, the two other accused -- alleged mastermind Shabir Hussain Naik and his associate Safdar Hussain -- are hiding in Pakistan and have been charge-sheeted as absconders, the officials said.

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The probe showed, according to the officials, that Naik had concealed that his father was in Pakistan and a senior member of the terror group and that he had been falsely mentioned that he was visiting Pakistan to meet a relative by the name of Subhan Bhat, a fictitious character. The objective of Naik's admission as a student in a mass media course in Pakistan was to return to India as a journalist and clandestinely get embedded in the system and receive instructions from across the border for planning, coordinating, and executing not only propaganda operations but separatist and even violent terrorist actions. But for the videos in his cell phone, the latter part of the adversary agenda would not have surfaced, the officials said. The probe also showed that Asif Naik had been given secret login credentials to the Kashmir Media Service (KMS), known as the mouthpiece of the United Jihad Council for Kashmir, and its web portal based in Pakistan. Besides this, his arrests also indicated that Pakistan's ISI was planning to revive militancy in the Chenab Valley and Jammu region by targeting prominent persons of a particular community and creating terror among the members of that community, the officials said.