Srinagar Feb 16: The recently constituted State Investigation Agency (SIA ) of the J&K government that has been mandated to investigate crimes “connected with terrorism and secessionism” on Wednesday claimed to have arrested ten Overground Workers (OGWs) of the Jaish outfit from various districts of south and central Kashmir.
An agency spokesman said that the arrests were made during overnight raids at ten different locations in the districts.
As per the spokesman the raids were “primarily focused on the network” of Jaish, saying “ten identified persons who were part of OGW modules and taking instructions from Jaish terrorist commanders have been arrested”.
“The module whose members were organised into sub-modules, in the form of verticals, so that in the event of detection of one member the bigger network does not the get compromised had been painstakingly discovered through discreet surveillance in which corroborative intelligence capable of being converted to admissible evidence in court was used to ascertain and confirm the Jaish OGW membership of the individuals”, it said.
“The module could be connected to other modules through higher levels of Jaish leadership. Their discovery is likely as the investigation rolls out in coming days,” it added.
The SIA said the “detected portion of the module had been active in recruiting other young persons, arranging finances, transporting weapons in south and central Kashmir besides providing other logistic support”.
“In the searches, besides arrests, cell phones, SIM cards, records to show use of banking channels and even a dummy pistol were seized. Among arrested persons, there is one at whose house four terrorists had been killed on 4th of April 2020,” it said.
It said that the “hitherto unknown module was working towards furthering terror activities in south and central Kashmir”.
“The arrested members were mostly recruiting vulnerable school and college going students as a few of them are students themselves. They were in close connection with the regular terrorists of Jaish outfit and had been under surveillance for quite some time”.
The agency further said that the digital records seized is being sent to FSL for evidence analysis and the arrested persons would be presented before the NIA court in Srinagar seeking permission for custodial questioning.
“It is believed the arrests and subsequent follow up investigation would dent the upper ground network of Jaish and degrade its ability to undertake terror activities aross valley”.