Delhi: Suspected LeT militant allegedly involved in Red Fort attack in 2000 arrested from airport
Bilal Ahmad Kawa’s bank account was allegedly used in hawala transactions that funded the strike as well as militancy in Kashmir.
The Delhi Police’s Special Cell and the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad on Wednesday arrested a suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, who was allegedly involved in the attack at the Red Fort in 2000, from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, The Hindu reported.
“The militant we arrested travelled to Delhi from Srinagar in a flight,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) MM Oberoi said. “We are interrogating him to verify his antecedents and ascertain the purpose for which he came to Delhi.”
The police alleged that 37-year-old Bilal Ahmad Kawa’s bank account was used in hawala transactions that funded the Red Fort terror attack as well as in terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir, The Indian Express reported.
Kawa is believed to have told the police that in the past 18 years, he had changed his location frequently, but that he had been living in Jammu and Kashmir of late. He claimed he was in Delhi to meet his brother.
Two soldiers of the Seventh Battalion of the Rajputana Rifles and a civilian guard were killed in indiscriminate firing at the Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Mohammad Arif from Pakistan’s Abbottabad, who planned the attack, and 10 others have already been convicted in the case.