J&K’s informer is Delhi’s terrorist

NEW DELHI: Who’s the real Haji Ghulam Mohi-ud-din Dar? In the Capital, he is painted as a dreaded terrorist who had planned to bomb the international airport.

Back home in Kashmir, he is the ambitious political leader who unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls. And in the secret world of the Jammu and Kashmir police, he is a dependable informer.

The Delhi police has nailed Dar as a terrorist who planned to bomb the Indira Gandhi International Airport. According to them, he and three of his associates were arrested on July 2, 2005, for their plot.

However, the J&K police insists Dar was a dependable informer who played a key role in the arrest and surrender of almost 300 terrorists.

“Dar was working for us when I was IGP in Kashmir,” says PS Gill who, later as additional director general of police, J&K, officially wrote a letter confirming this.

His family and friends believe his arrest was an elaborate frame-up, like in the recent case where the Central Bureau of Investigation found that the Delhi police framed two informers as terrorists after they refused to carry out an operation for them.

The CBI, in a report to a Delhi court, said the Special Branch had actually framed two local Muslims as terrorists a few days after the October 29, 2005, blasts in the Capital. Dar’s case, too, seems to be an elaborate frame-up of this nature, according to documents in DNA’s possession.

According to the J&K police and Border Security Force (BSF), Dar has played a critical role in the arrest and surrender of over 300 terrorists, starting 1998. He has not just been a police informer but a local social worker too. In 2004, he unsuccessfully fought the Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag parliamentary constituency against Mehbooba Mufti.

DNA has access to 17 letters written by senior J&K state police and BSF officials attesting to the fact that Dar had been of enormous help in anti-terrorist operations in Kashmir. Several of these were written before, and some after, his arrest following an “encounter” in Delhi. In a letter dated November 16, 2006, Gill wrote to the standing counsel for the state, Anis Suhrawardy, stating that Dar had been of immense help in anti-terror operations.

“I wish to state that the petitioner, Haji Ghulam Mohinuddin Dar, had worked in close conjunction with the police in various actions against militants during the period I was posted as IGP, Kashmir, and additional DGP, law and order, J&K. He had been extremely useful in obtaining information about and helping to neutralise some important terrorists,” he wrote.

Gill, who is presently transport commissioner of J&K, said that Dar was indeed an informer. “The court asked for confirmation of this fact and we provided all relevant documents and information to certify this.”