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India arrests 4 Kashmiris to forge evidence of Pak involvement in hijacking

NEW DELHI: India said on Thursday it had arrested four Kashmiri Mujahideen in connection with the week-long hijacking of an Indian airliner, and accused Pakistan of masterminding the drama.

Islamabad denied the charge and said India could be fabricating evidence to show Pakistanis were involved.

"One suspects that there will be manipulation and fabrication of evidence," Javed Jabbar, adviser to General Pervez Musharraf, told BBC Television.

"There was no involvement whatsoever of the government of Pakistan in any aspect of the incident. Absolutely not," he said.

"Those on the trail of the wrongdoers have been able to make a significant breakthrough," Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani told a news conference. "Deny howsoever it may, Pakistan is neck-deep in this dirty game of hijacking."

He spelt out six "tell-tale pointers" implicating Islamabad in the hijacking, which ended in Afghanistan on December 31 after India agreed to free three Mujahideen from jails in Kashmir in exchange for the 155 hostages on board the plane.

Advani said four members of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a Pakistan-based group fighting for Kashmiri independence, were arrested in Bombay on suspicion of providing support for the hijack plan two months before the hijacking.

Two of the four were Pakistanis and one was a Nepali.

The fourth was an Indian who, Advani said, was recruited by Pakistan's secret service while in the Gulf and later underwent intensive training at two camps, one in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan.

Harkat-ul-Ansar changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen after Washington included it on a 1997 list of groups it deemed foreign terrorist organisations. Last year Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was listed on a similar list of 28 organisations.

"Interrogations (of those arrested) have confirmed that all five (hijackers) are Pakistanis, that this was a Pakistani operation, executed with the assistance of the Harkat-ul-Ansar," Advani said.

Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked on Christmas Eve during a run from Kathmandu to New Delhi. It made stops in India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates before landing in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar.

Advani gave the names of the hijackers as Ibrahim Athar from the Pakistani city of Bahawalpur, Shahid Akhtar Sayed from Karachi, Sunny Ahmed Qazi from Karachi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim from Karachi and Shakir from Sukkur.

He said Islamabad had repeatedly asked in the past for the release of Muslim cleric Mohammed Azhar Masood, one of the three freed last week in return for the hijackers' hostages.

He released a letter written in June 1996 by Pakistan's then-interior minister, Lt-Gen Nasirullah Khan (Retd), to the Indian high commissioner in Islamabad seeking Masood's release on humanitarian grounds.

In the letter, Khan described Masood as a young "Pakistani journalist... (who) travelled to India in February 1994 on a Portuguese passport under the name of Essa Bin Adam. Apparently he had gone to India to see the conditions in Jammu and Kashmir himself for some report for his magazine."

India accuses Pakistan of fomenting a separatist insurgency in occupied Kashmir, over which the rivals have fought two of their three wars. Pakistan says it provides only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people's struggle for self-determination.

Advani said a Pakistani embassy car arrived at Kathmandu airport just before the departure of the Indian Airlines plane.-Reuters