Group behind threatening officers, scribes busted in J&K

Cops claim major breakthrough in assassinations of Shujat Bukhari, Babar Qadri.

Srinagar: Police on Saturday claimed to have arrested five persons for issuing threats to government officers, journalists, social activists, lawyers and political functionaries through “intimidation machinery kashmirfight.wordpress.com.”

Terming it a “major breakthrough” Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar said that the arrests were made in a “J&K wide operation” during which houses and properties at multiple locations including Sanat Nagar, Raj Bagh and Batpura Hazratbal in Srinagar, Poonch Jammu and Hawal in Pulwama belonging to five persons were searched.

“Armed with search warrants granted by competent court of law, police parties carried out searches of the suspect premises and recovered a large amount of cell phones, digital storage devices and computing platforms,” the top police officer said. “In one house alone, 32 mobile phones, one tablet, two laptops, four hard disk storage devices, seven memory cards and one dongle were seized.”

The arrested persons include Nazish Yasrab Rehmani and Tabish Akbar Rehmani from Sanatnagar, Sofi Mohammad Akbar from Rajbagh, Peerzada Raqif Makhdoomi from Batpora Hazratbal and Javed Khalid from Poonch, he said.

“It is worth mentioning that Kashmir fight.wordpress.com was being run by a white collar (militants) syndicate whose task was to prepare a strategic hit list of government officers, journalists, social activists, lawyers, political functionaries who were assessed by the syndicate to be responsible for Harming the Overarching objectives of furthering and sustaining the Pakistani supported (terrorist) programme with the eventual aim of secession of Jammu and Kashmir from the Indian union and its eventual annexation with Pakistan.”

He said with the arrest of the kingpins and the discovery of a huge number of digital devices and the analysis of the data therein, it is expected that the ultimate plans behind the murder of journalist Sujat Bukhari, advocate Babar Qadri, and businessman Satpal Nischal would come to the fore. “It may be recalled that the blog site Kashmirfight.wordpress.com had designed a modus operandi wherein the name of the victim was first published, he was profiled giving detailed justification as to how and why the he is a legitimate target for the (terrorists) and subsequently his actual execution by the (terrorists).”