NIA nabs key accused in Nagrota Army Camp attack; fourth arrest in December 2016 case

National Investigation Agency (NIA) Saturday arrested Mohammad Ashraf Khandey, the key accused in the Nagrota Army Camp attack case. Khandey was arrested from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi while he was trying to flee to Saudi Arabia via Sri Lanka.

Khandey’s arrest was a key achievement for the investigating agency probing the deadly militant attack on the Indian Army base camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Nagrota, in which seven army personnel were killed in December 2016.

The authorities first arrested an alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operative Muneer-ul-Hassan Qadri on 26 May, 2018. Qadri, a Nepal returnee, revealed during interrogation that the attack was carried out by the JeM, a banned terror group, in furtherance of a well-planned conspiracy from Pakistan.

The accused claimed to have told the interrogators that he, along with other Valley-based JeM operatives, had been in touch with the JeM leadership in Pakistan and had received a freshly infiltrated group of three Pakistani terrorists from the Samba sector a day before the attack. They subsequently stayed at a hotel in Jammu and then left the attackers outside the army camp in Nagrota late at night, and proceeded to the Valley.

The second arrest came in June when the agency arrested Tariq Ahmad Dar, a Pulwama-based timber dealer and a resident of Chillipura in Shopian district. Dar assisted Pakistani terrorists who carried out the attack, the NIA said.

The third accused , Ashiq Baba from Srinagar was arrested in June, just two days after Dar’s arrest. He too was accused of assisting the militants in carrying out the attack.

With inputs from agencies