Shujaat Bukhari's murder conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan, says J&K Police

Solving the case within a fortnight, the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday said it had ‘tangible evidence’ to establish that conspiracy to kill veteran journalist Shujaat Bukhari was hatched by cadres of Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit in Pakistan and executed by its terrorists based in Kashmir which involved Naved Jatt, who escaped from police custody earlier in February.

Giving details of the evidence collected, Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) Swayam Prakash Pani told reporters that the killers were identified as Jatt, a Pakistani national, Muzzafar Ahmad and Azad Malik, residents of south Kashmir, who had carried out the plan to kill Bukhari on June 14 when he was coming out of his office.               

The IGP said during investigations, it was found that there was a series of social media campaign in which online platforms were used which were intimidating at times.   

“Investigation has established that there was campaign in certain social media platform against Shujaat Bukhari spreading hate campaign, malicious and intimidating content against him like ‘Kashmirfight.wordpress.com’ and facebook account ‘Kadwa such Kashmir’ and twitter handler ‘Ahmad Khalid’, ahmadkhalid@313.

“During investigation with the cooperation of service providers tangible evidence has been collected to establish that individuals behind it belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organisation and all the content on social media was posted from Pakistan,” Pani said.

The person running these two social networking sites has been identified as Sajjad Gul, who had managed to flee India using passport that had been “fraudulently” obtained by the accused.

Gul, a resident of Srinagar, had earlier been arrested by Delhi police in 2003 and he had served sentence also. Later, he resumed his eduction and completed Master’s in Business Administration from Jaipur before returning to Srinagar. He was arrested by Kashmir police in 2016 for another terror related case and was subsequently released on bail.

“We will be approaching the Interpol for a Red Corner Notice against Gul after obtaining a non-bailable warrant against him from the local court,” he said.

Immediately after the killing of Bukhari, a Special Investigation Team headed by Deputy Inspector General (Central Kashmir Region) V K Birdi, was tasked to carry out the probe under the overall supervision of the IG Kashmir.

Pani said the investigation has so far established that this “terror crime” was committed by “proscribed terror organisation LeT. The conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan and execution was done by the three accused” and added it was an important case and the investigators are going to focus on all the evidence they have.

“There will also be a situation where transfer of evidence has to be done through the mutual legal assistance treaty,” he said.

Asked about the involvement of another suspect Zubair Qayoom, who was arrested two days after the 14 June incident, the IGP said at this stage his role is also being investigated.

“Two things are there—the pistol was recovered from him that he had taken from the scene of crime, two mobile phones were recovered from his possession, and he had tried to conceal his clothes and other things,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)