Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Mehrajuddin Wani alias Javed Dand - one of the terrorists who was involved in arranging logistics, including weapons and fake travel documents, for the hijackers of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar in December, 1999- had close links with fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Reports, Saturday, claimed that Mehrajuddin Wani has confessed before the interrogators that he worked closely with 1993 Mumbai serial blasts mastermind Dawood Ibrahim- the man who is most wanted in India.
According to sources, Wani was also in touch with Dawood’s brother during his stay in Nepal.
The interrogators have reportedly recovered a diary among other documents, which details about his Pakistan links and his contacts with several ISI officials.
Mehrajuddin, who is currently on a four-day police remand, lived in Nepal with a Hindu name and also got married there. He worked closely for several years with the IC-814 hijack accused Arshad Cheema, who was the ISI chief in Nepal. According to sources, Mehrajuddin returned to Jammu and Kashmir due to illness.
Interrogators also claim that Mehrajuddin was also allegedly involved in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar blasts in Delhi. As per intelligence sources, Mehrajuddin is a close associate of United Jihad Council (UJC) chief Syed Salahuddin. He was a member of UJC, an umbrella group of several militant outfits.
While the intelligence agencies hail Mehrajuddin’s arrest as a big breakthrough, it has come out that he was in fact a big informer of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), according to a leading daily news paper.
As per a report published in ‘The Indian Express’, pashmina shawl dealer Wani was a big asset for the IB in Nepal, who passed several valuable information to the spy agency.
He was tapped by the Indian intelligence agencies in 2000 after the Kandahar hijack to exploit his access as a Kashmiri in the shawls business in Nepal. The IB was aware of his contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Kathmandu, which made him a favourable candidate in the eyes of Indian intelligence agencies.
With Agency Inputs
