NIA arrests Pulwama resident for February 2019 attack on CRPF convoy

Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 7

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The NIA has arrested a Pulwama resident for allegedly providing logistical support to militants involved in planning the attack on a CRPF convoy that left 40 jawans dead in the south Kashmir district in February last year, officials said on Tuesday.

Bilal Ahmed Kuchey, a resident of Kakpora of Pulwama district, is the seventh person to be arrested in connection with the attack.

Officials in the agency said, Bilal was produced at a special NIA court in Jammu on Tuesday and sent to police custody for 10 days.

A resident of Hajibal of Kakapora locality in Pulwama district of the state, Bilal, who runs a sawmill in the area, “is a terror associate”, the NIA officials said, while claiming that he “harboured and extended logistic support to the JeM terrorists involved in the Pulwama attack”.

The officials also alleged that the main perpetrators in the case “stayed in his house and he further introduced them to the Over Ground Workers (OGWs), who provided safe houses during their stay and planning of the attack”.

“Bilal provided the JeM terrorists with high-end mobile phones, which were used by them to communicate with the Pakistan-based JeM leadership as well as among themselves for giving final touches to their planning and for execution of the attack,” the NIA said.

The officials also noted that the same mobile phones were used for recording the video clip of “Fidayeen Adil Ahmed Dar”, which became viral after the attack.

On February 14 last year, the suicide bomber blew himself up next to a CRPF bus, which was part of a 78-vehicle convoy carrying over 2,500 personnel on their way from Jammu to Srinagar. Forty CRPF personnel were killed.