Was among two terrorists held in Vijayanagar 15 years ago; Accomplice lodged in J&K prison

Mysore/Mysuru: Fifteen years after two Pakistani terrorists were arrested after a gun battle in Mysuru, one of them was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the Principal City Civil and Sessions Court in Bengaluru on Apr. 22. A huge cache of arms, ammunition and satellite phones were seized from them.

The persons aged 24 (in 2006), Fahad alias Naduthuni alias Mohammad Koya and Ali Hussain alias Jahangir alias Khasi owed allegiance to the banned Pakistan-based Al-Badr outfit. While Fahad hailed from Nazeemabad in North Pakistan, Ali Hussain hailed from Hazara Division in Pakistan.

Fahad has been sentenced now for 25 years on all the counts charged by the Police and since the sentences run concurrently, he has to serve 10 more years in jail. Ali Hussain is presently lodged at a jail in Jammu and Kashmir. He is involved in several terror activities in J&K and his trial is pending. 

Both were arrested by Vijayanagar Police near the High-Tension Road on the night of October 26, 2006. While Fahad, a post-graduate chemical engineer, was trained by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Ali Hussain was a school drop-out and had entered India illegally.

When the arrests were made, the present Director General and Inspector General of Police Praveen Sood was the Mysuru City Police Commissioner. Meticulously planning the investigation, he even had convinced the Court about their terror activities that has now led to the conviction. In all, 20 persons were charge-sheeted including eight local residents. The others were from Jammu and Kashmir and foreign nationals.

Dateline, October 26, 2006

Travelling on a Hero Puch two-wheeler, the militants were intercepted by the Vijayanagar Police. Two constables and a militant were injured as the two terrorists opened fire, drawing retaliation from the Police.

At that time, the Central Intelligence Agencies had alerted the Police about designs of a foreign-based militant group for a spectacular or devastating strike in Bengaluru with an eye on Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha. Sketches of both the buildings, an AK-47 rifle, satellite phones with numbers of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan, a laptop, chemicals used for making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and detonators were seized from the house of the two militants.

Both had surveyed Vikasa Soudha and Vidhana Soudha and informed their bosses about less security in the former while awaiting logistical support for their planned action. The militants had also surveyed the Central Institute of Regional Languages (Now, Central Institute of Indian Languages – CIIL), Mysuru. 

Ali Hussain was categorised as an ‘A’ category militant or a most dangerous terrorist by Jammu and Kashmir Police and carried a reward of Rs. 5 lakh on his head. He was involved in 12 cases in which 19 people were killed and four injured between March 2004 and June 2006, including a grenade attack on CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir.

How terrorists got local help

Eight local persons were also were arrested in 2006 for helping the Pak terrorists get ration cards, birth certificates and domicile certificates and in filing passport applications. Those arrested then have already served their three-year sentence. Based on the false certificates, the terrorists had applied for passports. But their applications were rejected by the Police during verification. 

A private deed writer in Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) had got Ali Hussain a false birth certificate in the name of Asif Khan. He also got a false domicile certificate and a residential proof certificate. A woman was produced who impersonated as Hussain’s mother to obtain false documents. 

The Mysuru Police had visited Kozhikode in Kerala to trace the links of Fahad and his visa had expired and he had no intention of getting it extended. Fahad needed a ‘genuine cover’ to stay in India without being noticed by the Police.

He had contacted his cousins in Kozhikode to help him in acquiring a passport in the name of Mohamed Koya and had paid two agents Rs. 20,000 for this. The attempt did not, however, succeed as the agent demanded Rs. 18,000 more which Fahad found to be an expensive deal. Fahad thought it would be easier to get a passport from Mysuru, where he was already trying to get one made for Hussain, using the agents in the  MCC Regional Transport Office.