Pro-Pakistan hardliner Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani had given a recommendation letter to Lashkar-e-Toiba militant Athesham Malik, arrested by the Delhi Police, for getting a Pakistani Visa.
Official sources said a copy of the recommendation letter given by Geelani was found in the papers seized from 24-year old Malik.
The sources said recoveries made from Athesham, who had undergone a training in Pakistan in December, 2011, were material for fabrication of IED, including wires, flash powder used in crackers and sulphuric acid.
Home Minister P Chidambaram said the men were planning to bomb a crowded area of Delhi. The police said both men had been trained in Pakistan and were found with flash drives that showed videos of how to assemble bombs.
The two suspects were arrested on the tip off of a third suspect who was earlier arrested in Jharkhand. A Delhi Police team arrived in Hazaribagh on Thursday to interrogate the arrested terrorist. He was handed over to Delhi Police on two days’ transit remand by a court in Ranchi, Jharkhand police said on Thursday.
A laboratory technician, Malik was earlier associated with Lashkar in Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir and was arrested in 2007 along with two others.
When contacted, spokesperson for Geelani, Ayaz Akbar, said “we don’t know about this case. But generally, if any Kashmiri comes to Geelani sahab for recommendation, he gives his recommendation only because they being Kashmiri. But then how can he know why he wants to go there and what his motive is”?
–PTI