Jaish-e-Mohammed commander, Nisar Ahmed Tantray, deported from the UAE to India last Sunday, has disclosed that he knew about the February 14 Pulwama suicide car bombing because the key conspirator, Mudassir Khan, had asked him to participate in a “spectacular” attack being planned at the instructions of JeM’s leadership in Pakistan, an official involved in Tantray’s interrogation said.
This is the first confirmation from a JeM commander that the Pulwama attack was carried out on the orders of the outfit’s leadership, and that Khan was the person who executed it. Until now, Indian investigative agencies were depending on intelligence inputs and the questioning of some lower-level JeM terrorists.
Tantray, the brother of slain JeM leader Noor Ahmed Tantray, fled from India on February 1 this year.
According to an intelligence bureau officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, he has significant influence over JeM cadres in Kashmir valley, particularly after he planned the December 30, 2017 attack on a CRPF Group Camp in Lethpora.
Tantray has told interrogators that Khan called him using a social media app and informed about the plan to hit a convoy in mid-February with heavy explosives somewhere in Pulwama