Captured militant says Pakistan colonel paid him to attack Indian Army post
Tabarak Hussain was intercepted by security forces in Rajouri’s Naushera sector on Sunday.
A militant captured by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district was paid Rs 30,000 in Pakistan currency by a colonel in Pakistan intelligence agency to attack an Indian Army post, PTI reported, citing officials.
Thirty-two-year-old Tabarak Hussain, a resident of the Kotli district in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, was arrested on Sunday in Naushera sector after being intercepted by security forces.
Hussain told ANI that he was accompanied by four to five other men to carry out a suicide attack.
“We were asked to attack the Indian Army,” he told the news agency. “I had come in 2016 [too]. This time we could not attack. The others ran away after I was hit by a bullet. The Indian Army saved me.”
Brigadier Kapil Rana, the Army’s 80 Infantry Brigade commander, said that the security forces had spotted two-three men coming from across the Line of Control on Sunday.
One of them came close to the Indian post and tried cutting the fence but was stopped by the Army. The militant tried to flee but was brought down a bullet that incapacitated him, Rana said.
After he was captured and interrogated, Hussain confessed about the plan and identified the colonel as Yunus Chaudhry, according to Rana.
Hussain told ANI that he, along with some other militants, carried out reconnaissance of Indian forward posts with the aim of targeting them later. He also claimed that he was trained by a Pakistan Army official whom he identified as Major Razak.
Indian Army doctor Rajeev Nair said that when Hussain was brought to the hospital, he was in a critical condition, according to ANI. While his life has been saved, he will take several weeks to recover, the doctor added.
Nair said that his work as a doctor is to save the life of whoever comes to him as a patient.
“We have made the same effort to save him that we would have made for soldiers or others,” he said. “This is the valour of Indian soldiers that they even donated blood to save him. He had come to shed their blood and our soldiers donated their blood to save him.”