Pak phone call, 5 missing men

The Ayodhya terrorists8217; first link with Pakistan and Kashmir emerged as the police traced their telephone calls, while the search for ...

The Ayodhya terrorists8217; first link with Pakistan and Kashmir emerged as the police traced their telephone calls, while the search for their identity reached the Valley today.

The J-K police have received the photographs of the militants and its intelligence wing is busy making checks. Although there is no concrete link established as yet, a mysterious case of the disappearance of five young men last month from Srinagar8217;s Dalgate area is being thoroughly probed.

According to police sources, the five men8212;belonging to Surankote in Poonch district8212;were working as labourers in Srinagar before they went missing on June 13. The police was, however, approached on June 20 and a case FIR 216 was lodged at Ram Munshi Bagh Police Station.

Relatives of the five missing labourers told them that two unidentified local persons Kashmiri-speaking had come to the Dalgate area and offered them work as labourers in Kupwara. But when the families lost contact with the five men for a week, they approached the police. In fact, the mobile phone number given by the two local persons as the only contact in Kupwara too proved wrong.

The subsequent police investigations, however, reveal that the only lead they received was a phone call one of the missing men made to his father8212;who works in Saudi Arabia8212;on June 26. Though the phone disconnected immediately, the family informed the police. Further enquiries revealed that the call was made from a public phone booth in Anantnag.

Investigations then hit a dead end. The five missing men have been identified as Mohammad Rafeeq, Mohammad Mushtaq, Mohammad Janbaz, Mohammad Mushtaq and Abdul Majeed8212;all of them in their 20s. Police sources reveal that none of them has any established links with the militants and a thorough background check is being conducted in Poonch.

Once the group of five unidentified militants8212;who seemed poorly trained8212;were killed in Ayodhya, the police are investigating all possible links. 8216;8216;Till now there is nothing that makes us believe that the five men, who were killed in Ayodhya, have any connection with Kashmir,8217;8217; a senior police officer said.

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However, UP Additional DGP A Palanivel told The Indian Express today that the terrorists had made numerous calls from their mobile phone to Pakistan, PoK and Jammu and Kashmir before the July 5 attack.

8216;8216;We had seized a mobile phone from the pocket of one of the dead terrorists. Though the phone had no SIM card or battery, we ascertained the EMI number and have now obtained a detailed printout of the calls made. The calls went to Pakistan, Kashmir, New Delhi, Lucknow and Akbarpur,8217;8217; he said.

A team of the UP Special Task Force has now left for Delhi with the list of the calls to coordinate with the Central intelligence agencies in the investigation. 8216;8216;They used three drivers and two vehicles to reach the blast site in Ayodhya from Akbarpur. All drivers say that only one of them was able to speak Hindi while two others spoke Urdu. The other two were said to be speaking in a foreign language,8217;8217; said the ADGP.

DGP Yashpal Singh said they found a visiting card of Mulk Raj 038; Sons, a shop in Lucknow8217;s Kesarbagh area, in the pocket of one of the terrorists. 8216;8216;The owner of the shop has told the police that on July 3, three youngsters came to his shop and bought three bags for Rs 1,000,8217;8217; the DGP said. According to the owner, the three were speaking Hindi and looked like residents of UP and Bihar, the DGP said. The DGP said that the SIM card was bought from Faizabad on the basis of a fake driving licence which mentioned an Amritsar address.