Srinagar, July 28: A communication device under scanner since the April 22 Pahalgam attack could have blown the Dachigam hideout. Top security grid sources told CNN-News18 that a suspicious call from this device, two days ago, set the alarm bells ringing.
The input was developed further, and an operation was launched in the Dachigam forest on Monday.
A Huawei satellite phone was reportedly used by the terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack, but the device had not been used since the attack.
However, intelligence agencies tracking the phone observed that a call was made using the device two days ago. Subsequently, the location of the device was found to be deep inside Dachigam, with no human habitation around it.
While agencies were yet to identify the terrorists killed in the Dachigam encounter on Monday, one of them was identified as Hashim Musa, the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack.
There was also suspicion that they belonged to Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Two harbourers, identified as Parvez and Bashir Ahmed, arrested earlier by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), also said that three Pakistani Lashkar terrorists were involved in the Pahalgam terror attack.
Top officials in Jammu and Kashmir said that while bringing the bodies down will take time, the drone photography method was being used to ascertain the identities of the slain terrorists.
“These photos will be shown to the arrested harbourers to identify the killed terrorist,” officials said.
THE DACHIGAM ENCOUNTER
Security forces on Monday neutralised three terrorists in the upper reaches of the Dachigam forest near Srinagar after gunshots were heard in the area earlier in the day.
Top intelligence sources confirmed that all three slain terrorists were foreign nationals affiliated with the LeT.
“OP MAHADEV – Contact established in General Area Lidwas. Operation in progress,” Srinagar-based Chinar Corps of the Army posted on its X handle.
The security forces, acting on an intelligence input, launched an anti-militancy operation in the Mulnar area of Harwan, they said.
Two rounds of gunshots were heard from a distance as security personnel were carrying out searches, news agency PTI quoted officials as saying.
Reinforcements were rushed to the area, and the combing operations intensified to track down the terrorists, they said.
