Alleged RAW agent held in Karachi

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Others like these must also be captured before any more potential subversive activities by RAW during the election period.

**Alleged RAW agent held in Karachi **

By our correspondent

KARACHI: Bijjal Ramjee, a Pakistani national allegedly working for the Indian intelligence agency RAW, was arrested red-handed on September 29 by the police when he was taking photographs of Karachi Expo Centre where IDEAS-2002 was held.

Announcing his arrest at a press conference here on Monday, Inspector General Police, Sindh, Syed Kamal Shah said police apprehend Bijjal Ramjee on Sunday from outside the Expo Centre and recovered a camera from his possession. After developing the film police found that he had taken photographs of the entry and exit points of Expo Centre and nearby buildings.

The IGP maintained that Bijjal would be handed over to the army authorities. Kamal said during investigation the accused disclosed that a week earlier he met a RAW agent, Karim, in Sanghar at the house of Hoto Mull. Karim gave him Rs 25,000 and a camera and directed him to take the photographs of Expo Centre, as those would be required in India.

He said: “Police also arrested Hoto Mull from Sanghar district and he would be brought to Karachi soon. Now we are tracing the key man Karim.” “We have informed the army authorities of the arrest and they would interrogate the accused. Bijjal will be tried under Army Act if he discloses any defence-related thing,” he added. “During preliminary investigations, we have not found any Karachi-based contact of Bijjal.”

Narrating the details, the provincial police chief said Bijjal Ramjee was born in 1973 in Village 59-B Tehsil Sadiqabad, District Rahim Yar Khan. In 1996-97, Bijjal’s brothers Sarwan Ram and Krishan Ram moved to India to look after the 200 acres agricultural land of their grandfather. After a year Bijjal also went to India and later called his family there. All of them resided illegally in village Nangar Tehsil of district Jaiselmeer and the police and RAW began to vex them.

They informed their relative Hari Lal, who was residing in India since 1995-96, of the problem. Hari agreed to help them on the condition that Bijjal and his brothers would work for RAW.

In October 1999, Hari Lal, who was an Indian agent, took Bijjal to a RAW office in Jodhpur. There he met RAW officer Roop Singh who blackmailed him and Bijjal agreed to work for the agency.

He received 15 days training to handle explosives in Jodhpur. Bijjal also met Karim in the presence of Roop Singh and Vijay Singh. Later, Bijjal and Karim entered into Pakistan from the Chotan area. Bijjal was lodged in an unknown place for two days and then brought to Umarkot and directed to go to the house of Hoto Mull in Sanjhoro, district Sanghar. In November 1999, Karim met Bijjal at Hoto’s house and handed over explosive and directed him to explode it near the bridge at Lahore Railway Station. Karim also gave him Rs 5,000 as advance for the job. Bijjal went to Lahore where he planted the device on November 20, which killed seven people and injured 14.

Next day, Bijjal left Lahore and came to Hoto’s house where Karim informed him that soon he would be sent to India. Karim again met Bijjal at Hoto’s house in April 2000 and handed over explosives which he had brought from India and directed him to plant them in a Peshawar market. Bijjal went to Peshawar and placed the explosive in a shop but it did not explode.

Meanwhile, Bijjal Ramjee told journalists that RAW had detained his family in India and threatened to kill them. He confessed that he exploded two bombs in the country. According to him, a RAW agent gave him Rs 25,000 and directed him to take photographs of the Expo Centre one week ago.

Regarding the killing of Christians, IGP Kamal Shah said: “We are not satisfied with the disclosures of eyewitness Robin Peeran Ditta. We conducted a polygraph test and according to the expert’s opinion Robin is guilty. He knows the killers but maybe he is in a state of shock. We have not arrested him formally as yet. We are also working on some other leads.”

The IGP stated: “So far we have not found any connection between the RAW agent and the killing of seven Christians in Rimpa Plaza.” To a question, the IGP said: “We have informed the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca about the arrest of Bijjal and involvement of the RAW. We discussed the security of Sindh and Karachi with Rocca. We also informed her of our weaknesses and handicaps, as we have no sophisticated equipment for investigations of certain cases such as cyber crimes. We cannot solve high profile technology related cases without foreign technical assistance.”

APP adds: Police in Kasur have arrested a RAW agent while entering Pakistan territory from India and recovered gun powder, map of Kasur city, safety fuse wires and other related equipment from him.

Police was patrolling when it saw a suspect person near Panua Kalan and after his thorough search the police recovered explosive material and other equipment from him. He was identified as Charn Singh s/o Harnam Singh of Dera Baba Nanak Gurdaspur (India). After interrogation, the accused had confessed that he intended to carry out sabotage activities in the city during upcoming election day.

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Isn’t it rather hard for you to understand that they are a prelude to upcoming elections in Pakistan. Arresting RAW agents for subversive activities, India getting ready to a pre-empt strike, Pak getting doles of money from US, and so on.

Oh my dear dear army rule, I will support whoever supports you.

And the other reason is there in your post
“We have informed the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca about the arrest of Bijjal and involvement of the RAW. We discussed the security of Sindh and Karachi with Rocca”

The greatest giver US will give more, if shown the scare. :hehe:

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Hain? Don’t you guys scare of ISI Monkey? Don’t you show bigger scare of it? Does US support and give ya more? :stuck_out_tongue:

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**RAW infiltrates into jehadi cells to create mayhem **

By Amjad Bashir Siddiqi

KARACHI: With an eye on spreading anarchy, the RAW has established itself firmly in Karachi and Islamabad and is running a network of sleuths and financiers directing terrorist and espionage operations across the country, it is reliably learnt.

To understand the network, The News interviewed a cross-section of veteran and present leaders of militants of the jehadi outfits as well as those heading the sectarian groups, besides other sources.

All of these jehadis strongly believe that the deadly explosions targeting the French technicians, the US consulate or the most recent killing of seven Christians in Karachi, were carried out by RAW through naive activists of various jehadi and sectarian organisations which have been heavily infiltrated.

Like any intelligence operation, the activist carrying out the action forms the third or fourth tier of the organisation and hardly knows the real masters he is working for, the sources said. “He is either motivated by a cause he shows allegiance to or is pressured into doing it against small one-time favours.”

The infiltration had become easier due to formation of cells independent of a particular outfit and its discipline and comprising activists previously working for different groups who had agreed to work together on an assignment, they said. Many of the sectarian and other terrorist incidents targeting Pakistanis were being directed from RAW’s external department in the Indian embassies in neighbouring Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf sheikhdoms.

In the mid-1990s, a Brelvi outfit was heavily funded and helped to organise in order to checkmate the Deobandi extremism against the Shias, formally creating an intra-Sunni divide. The party took on the Deobandi leadership killing many, including some top leaders. “The party chief, who was killed two years ago, reportedly used to get directions from his bosses in Dubai as evident by many visas of the Gulf state on his passport,” the sources said.

The party was funded heavily by a Shia front man working on the behest of India. “For many years it was thought that Iran was behind the creation of this party, now contesting elections in Karachi,” the sources said.

There was another leader who, until a few months ago, operated from Saudi Arabia and was a known financier of Muslim struggles in Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was ultimately identified as the front man working for the Indian embassy in Jeddah. “For years he helped many agents infiltrate the militant Kashmiri groups leading to the dismantling of one outfit after another,” the sources added. He also posed as a Deobandi Sunni who was funding sectarian groups.

The sources said: “After two years of intensive interrogations and tracking we found this Indian front man to have financed the spiral of sectarian killings in September-October 1999. Nearly 25 Shia and Sunni activists and common people were killed with a single shot in their heads fired from close range. The weapon used was the standard KGB handgun, the Macrov. In the past, some ethnic targets were killed in the same way and with the same kind weapon, manifesting the use of naive, independently working party men of a local ethnic party.”

The same modus operandi of a point blank shot in the head was employed in the Rimpa Plaza incident in which seven Christians were killed. This also appears to be RAW inspired work against the backdrop of previous incidents. “The jehadis are not expert marksmen. They generally gun down their targets by firing a volley instead of single point blank shots,” the sources observed.

It appears that Sharib of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, the prime suspect of killing of the Frenchmen and US consulate explosion, was used by a similar front man as money was despatched through Hundi at least twice in 2002; once in March and then in June. “The money was traced to some individual activists of a few groups giving rise to apprehensions that ‘our groups’ have been compromised owing to naivety and over zealousness. We don’t know the extent of their infiltration but we have a strong gut feeling that they are doing it,” a jehadi leader said.

This might be the reason that the al-Alami chief denied any knowledge of the attack on the French technicians or of Mustafa who provided the suspected suicide bomber for the US consulate bombing. He had, however, admitted that Sharib had kept insisting on carrying out suicide attack on the French technicians and protested when it was not approved owing to their importance for a crucial Pakistan Navy project. Nevertheless, the group had followed the movements of the Frenchmen.

Keeping in view the track record of al-Qaeda and the jehadis that they never targeted any defence installation of their host Muslim country, it is suspected that RAW may be involved in an attempt to sabotage the navy project. “However, these are bits of information leading to serious doubts but not a smoking gun,” the source said.