The arrest of Syed Liyaqat Shah, an alleged Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
militant, has started a volley of claims and counter-claims in India on
whether he was planning a terror attack in Delhi or was on his way to
Jammu and Kashmir as part of a rehabilitation plan.
There’s no dispute however over the fact that he had arrived in
Kathmandu from Pakistan and was about to enter India through the
Gorakhpur border when he landed in police net. Shah was not the first
militant from Jammu and Kashmir who has followed the route.
Since 2010 nearly 300 former militants have returned to their home
state, Jammu and Kashmir, from Pakistan to take part in the state
government’s rehabilitation process. Many of them have travelled via
Nepal and used to porous Indo-Nepal border—for their return.
Though the method has no official sanction of Indian and Pakistani
governments, intelligence authorities of both countries are aware of it
and have seemed to allow it to be used by disillusioned militants
willing to return home and rebuild their lives.
But the Nepal route in used not just by militants willing to
surrender and lead normal lives. The same path is being followed by many
active militants, both from Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan, to enter
India and carry out terror strikes across the country.
US diplomatic cables released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks in
December 2010 mentions how 16 terrorists entered India via Nepal and
then proceeded to Jammu and Kashmir in the first six months of 2009.
Former Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor made this assertion
during a meeting of the then US National Security Advisor James Jones
with defence minister AK Antony and defence ministry officials in New
Delhi in June 2009.
Replying to a query by Jones on the percentage of infiltrators from
Pakistan that manage to get through, Kapoor estimated it to be around
15-20% while citing the challenge posed by India’s open border with
Nepal.
Indian authorities believe that the flow of militants using the same
route is still continuing—with aid from the Pakistani embassy in
Kathmandu. The porous border with Nepal is also believed to be used by
militants to escape after carrying out terror strikes in India.
Besides militants the open Indo-Nepal border is used to ferry fake
Indian currency from Pakistan to India. The same route is taken to
smuggle arms into India—-both fake currency and arms are then used to
fund militant activities and carry out terrorist attacks.
Nepal has been a safe haven of sorts for not just militants from
Jammu and Kashmir but also for terror outfits of north east India.
In December 2010, Rajkumar Meghen, chairman of the banned United
National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur was arrested by a team of
National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and Bihar Police from East Champaran
when he was about to board a Nepal-bound bus.
He allegedly had a Nepali name-Raju Shrestha, which he used as an alias while he was in Nepal.
Two months earlier, Anthony Shing aka Ningkhan Shimray, the foreign
affairs chief of Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland
(Issac-Muivah) was arrested at the Tribhuwan International Airport in
Kathmandu.
The same year in July another NE ultra, Niranjan Hojai,
‘commander-in-chief’ of the Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel) group of Assam,
was also arrested in Nepal and handed over to Indian authorities.
Both Hojai and his ‘boss’ Jewel Garlossa who was arrested in
Bangalore in June 2010 had properties in Nepal including hotels. The
later also had a Nepali wife and fake Nepali passports.
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