India asks Pak to act against Jaish-e-Mohammed

New Delhi, Jan 6: India has asked Pakistan to immediately act against the leadership of the terror organization, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), beginning with the arrest of its three operatives, who were coordinating the Pathankot terror attack and were in touch with the terrorists who carried it out.

New Delhi also asked Islamabad to arrest Moulana Masood Azhar—the JeM founder, who has been subjected to sanctions by the US government for his links with terror networks at least since 2010, but lives free in Pakistan.

The “specific and actionable information” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval shared with his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua on Monday included recordings and transcripts of the calls between the terrorists, who carried out the attack on the IAF base at Pathankot and their ‘handlers’ at the control room JeM set up in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, sources in New Delhi told Deccan Herald.

The calls were intercepted by India’s intelligence agencies.

Sources said the JeM operatives, who had coordinated the attack from Pakistan, had been identified as Ashfaq Ahmad, Hafiz Abdul Shakur and Kasim Jaan.

Ashfaq is known as a close aide of Masood Azhar and is believed to have played a key role in reviving the JeM over the past couple of years.

Doval is understood to have also shared with Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif’s NSA the specific location of the control room set up by the JeM to coordinate the attacks.

Azhar was arrested by the Army in Kashmir in 1994, but New Delhi had to release him in 1999 in exchange of the passengers of the IC-814, which was hijacked by the terrorists and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The JeM, based in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department in 2001. After Pakistan was forced to outlaw it in 2002, the outfit began using Al Rehmat Trust as a front for its operations.

The Al Rehmat Trust provided support for militant activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including financial and logistical support to foreign fighters operating in both countries.

In early 2009, several prominent members of Al Rehmat Trust were recruiting students for terrorist activities in Afghanistan, according to a report by the US Department of Treasury.