Joint ops net 11 ISI agents since mid-November

KOLKATA: A joint probe by the Kolkata police's special tast force (STF), the Delhi police crime branch and special cell, UP STF and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has netted 11 ISI operatives across the country since November 14, seven of whom have either roots in Bengal, or have been operating from the state. The amount of fake Indian currency handled by the module has already crossed a couple of crores.
Broken into three modules, the agencies believe each had a specific role. STF sources say that while all three modules were charged with providing a haven for Pakistani operatives like Mohd Ijaz alias Mohd Kalam, the one led by brothers Akhtar and Zafar concentrated on pushing fake currency into the country from Bangladesh. The other big module led by Mohd Illyas with Sk Badal was trying to prepare fake documents -passports and EPICs -to allow Pakistani and Bangladeshi ISI recruits to enter India without a hitch. The third, and the biggest one which had operatives like the Kolkata-based GRSE employee Mohd Irshad, rifleman from Rajou ri Fareed Khan (operating in north Bengal) and Islamabad born Mohd Ijaz, reported about Army , Navy and Air Force movements and acquisitions in eastern India.
The investigators, though, have identified Ijaz -the man who photographed the Kolkata dockyard -and Kaifitullah Khan as the two men who coordinated the ISI operations in north and east India. The Kolkata police probe on Ijaz, coupled with inputs from Meerut police and the UP STF , has revealed that he had attempted to conceal his identity and “marry into“ an Indian family to try settle down in India.
Ijaz, born near Islamabad, comes from a well respected Pakistani family . His brother is a photographer with the British Embassy in that country and hence rubbed shoulders with the elite, such as Pak foreign minister Hina Rabbani and cricketer Shahid Afridi. Yet, when Ijaz took a flight out of Karachi to Bangladesh after nine months' training at the ISI, he passed himself off as an orphan. Pushed through Bangladesh, it was GRSE employee Irshad who got him settled both at Garden Reach and Bareilly in UP .
Babar, a clothes merchant from Garden Reach and now on the run, got him married to a poor daily wage-earner's daughter from Bihar's Arah. He moved to Bareilly after marriage but rarely stayed at one place during his espionage days. Rifleman Fareen Khan, on the other hand, handed over details about battle of order details of Army divisions of J&K and Bengal. He had them stacked in CDs and pen drives.Yet, whether it was Ijaz or Fareen, their original passports were burnt by ISI and then blackmailed into following orders, said the sources. Both Fareen and Ijaz were asked to find out “easy targets“ at Panagarh. For this, they were asked to develop a friendship with both lower-level police officers and those in the paramilitary forces.