NIA chargesheets Dilawar Iqbal, close associate of JeM chief

Delhi: Mohd Dilawar Iqbal, a close associate of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Mazood Azhar, and a Kashmiri youth Mohd Ubaid Malik have been charge-sheeted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly conspiring to orchestrate terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the NIA, Dilawar allegedly incited youth "having a military background" to pursue 'jihad' by sharing with them inflammatory audio clips and videos as well as images of Maulana Mazood Azhar showing him preaching. He would also send encounter videos in Kashmir valley and "provoke" youth to pick up arms.

Ubaid was "motivated" by Dilawar to join JeM, the NIA said, adding the duo were allegedly involved in a criminal conspiracy to carry out terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir by unleashing attacks on security forces and "so-called outsiders". The charge-sheet was filed in a special court in Jammu.

The agency claimed in a statement that Dilawar, who has an alias such as Maaz Khan Kashmiri, Maaz Khan, Maaz Kashmiri, and Azad Kashmir, was motivating Kashmiri youths as part of a larger conspiracy hatched by proscribed terrorist organisations and their affiliates to carry out terrorist activities in Kashmir. He hails from Abbaspur in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir.

The chargesheet came in connection with a case registered suo motu by the NIA on June 21 last year. It was in connection with a conspiracy hatched by terrorist organisations to "unleash violent terrorist attacks in J-K with sticky bombs, IEDs and small arms, etc" to carry out terrorist attacks and violence in the region.

"It involves radicalisation of local youth and mobilisation of overground workers of newly floated terrorist groups such as - The Resistance Front, United Liberation Front Jammu and Kashmir, Mujahideen Gazwat-ul-Hind, Jammu and Kashmir Freedom Fighters, Kashmir Tigers, PAAF and others. These outfits are affiliated to proscribed terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), JeM, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), Al-Badr, Al-Qaeda, etc," the NIA said.

It said the investigations in the case are going on with the agency "continuously working to expose and thwart the bigger conspiracy of the terrorist organisations to revive terrorism and disturb the peace and communal harmony" in Jammu and Kashmir.