Lashkar,ISI engineered car bomb blast in JK: Police

Commandant of Military Hospital,Major General D S Pathania escaped narrowly in the blast on Jammu-Srinagar national highway at Bremi bridge in Udhampur district in which a milk vendor was killed and 10 others were injured.

“We have cracked the case of the car bomb blast. One PoK militant of LeT was involved in the blast along with some Over Ground Workers (OGWs). He is at large,” Inspector General of Police (IGP),Jammu Zone,Dilbagh Singh told reporters.

“The LeT had engineered the blast on the directions of its cross-border mentors in ISI through its sleeper cell to keep the pot of militancy boiling in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

Singh said that Special Investigation Team (SIT),which has been constituted,is working hard to track down the main accused Sarwar.

“LeT OGW and state government’s agriculture extension officer Abdul Majid has been arrested in the conspiracy of the blast and several others including the local wife of Sarwar have been detained,” the IGP,who was flanked by DIG,Udhampur-Reasi Range,Jagjit Kumar and SSP,Udhampur,Surinder Gupta said.

The Maruti car used in the blast was purchased from New Delhi in the name of Majid at a cost of Rs 27,000,laden with explosives in Jammu and later blown up through a remote control in Udhampur,he said. The remote control was also recovered from his Tata Sumo vehicle at Sidhra in Jammu.

The militant was operating as a sleeper cell in Jammu city since 2008 when he came via Bangladesh to Delhi and then to Jammu.

“The cross-border mentors had made all arrangements to fake his (Sarwar) identity as a local with the help of LeT and its OGWs in J-K,” Singh said.

Plans of his settlement in Jammu were made in Rajouri-Poonch belt,he said,adding LeT commanders of Rajouri– Poonch Hanjula and Usama- both Pakistanis,had settled him by constituting a sleeper cell.

Under this plan,they created a network of OGWs and used Majid — Agriculture Extension Officer of Behrot village in Thanamandi belt of Rajouri district,to house the militant in his home as his deceased brother’s son.

Majid was instrumental in getting him a State Subject Certificate,Ration Card,date of birth certificate in Rajouri,driving license from Poonch and a degree certificate from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh,the IGP said,adding that he also gotted married to a local girl.

Majid was also instrumental in settling him Jammu changing various residences in Gujjar Nagar,Bathindi,Nagrota and Sidhra and purchasing for him a truck and a Tata Sumo for projecting him as a transporter,Singh said.