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| Damaged smartphone helps NIA, security forces fight terror in Kashmir | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 1: Even as the National Investigation Agency has recently produced a marathon 5000 page chargesheet into the suicide bombing in Pulwama in February 2019 that left over 40 security force personnel martyred, it was a damaged smartphone of a terrorist, which is understood to have helped the NIA get goldmine of information about the plot and even beyond.
Top sources said the recovery of details from the phone not only helped in the case investigations but that it has been helping the security forces to fight terror as well and led to elimination of several of them since.
The sources said the details recovered from the phone were so big that they continue to help security forces in their counter insurgency operations.
Sources said Pakistan had that the smartphone that was used to hatch plan to execute bombing be destroyed soon after the attack.
Top sources said the intelligence agencies had inputs that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) commanders wanted their team in Kashmir to delete all evidence related to Pulwama bombing so that Indian investigators would remain clueless.
Intelligence agencies say that Umar Farooq, the Jaish commander, who executed Pulwama bombing, was directed by his Pakistani handlers to destroy his smartphone immediately after the suicide strike. Farooq, however, had not done that.
A month later, when he was killed in an encounter, the security forces did find but only remains of his smartphone that was badly damaged.
A police official said the phone was badly damaged in the encounter and its data could not be accessed that time but that it was kept in the items seized from the encounter site.
Sources said police told the NIA that they had recovered a phone that was not operational. Sources said the NIA at once took over the phone to try the luck.
Finally, the NIA roped in experts including those from forensics to recollect the data from the damaged phone. “It was something impossible but our teams worked hard day and night to achieve it and the result was credible evidence including details of those involved in the bombing,” said a senior official on the condition of anonymity.
Sources said the recovery of the phone from the encounter site proved a turning point in the investigations leading to details of all those including the involvement of Pakistan in the attack.
It is for the second time in the last few years that smartphone of a militant helped security forces to get goldmine of information about the terror activities in Kashmir.
Prior to this the forces had managed to crack open the smartphone of Abu Dujana who was also killed in an encounter.
That time security forces had approached a US based firm to seek assistance in cracking the case. |
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