Jammu and Kashmir police to grill two arrested JeM suspects

LUCKNOW: A team of Jammu and Kashmir Police will reach Lucknow in the next few days to question the two Kashmiri youth arrested by the UP Anti Terorist Squad (ATS) for their suspected connection with Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militants killed in the valley in an encounter with the security forces days after the Pulwama terror attack.


The two, Shahnawaz Teli of

Kulgam

and Aquib Ahmad Malik of Pulwama, arrested from a private hostel in

Deoband

township of Saharanpur on Friday for their alleged links with Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), were produced before a magistrate in Lucknow on Saturday. The court sent them to police custody for 10 days.

"The team of Jammu and Kashmir Police is expected to reach Lucknow by Tuesday to question the two for their links with JeM and their activites in the valley before they came to UP," said inspector general of police (IGP) ATS Asim Arun, who is personally supervising the interrogation of the two accused.

He said that the data from the cellphones of the two accused will be extracted before the court on Monday and will be examined thereafter. Sleuths have so far come across videos of Masood Azhar and some chats which appear to be suspicious.

"We will take them to Kashmir and Delhi to establish their source of funds as they have revealed that they have contacts in the two states," said IG. He said police is looking for a person from Kashmir who visited the duo at their Deoband hostel a day before their arrest. The two along with a third room partner, who has been let off by ATS as his activities were not found to be suspicious, had organised a lavish dinner for this visitor.

Sources in ATS said that there were reasons to believe that Shahnawaz was in touch with a listed JeM militant who was gunned down in an encounter on February 19 in Pulwama. "The J&K Police team will question them and establish if there was a direct link between the two or not," said an officer.

Meanwhile, during interrogation the duo claimed that they decided to shift to UP as they had got fed up with repeated questioning by intelligence agencies in valley at regular intervals, said sources.

Earlier, it became a challenge for UP ATS to produce the two arrested Kashmiris in court as scores of lawyers surrounded its vehicle. Later, ATS produced them before a magistrate at his residence.