Bahadur Ali, Lashkar-e-Taiba Terrorist, Charged by Anti-Terror Agency NIA

New Delhi: Pakistani terrorist Bahadur Ali, who confessed last year to working for the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, was formally charged by India's top anti-terror agency today. The National Investigation Agency or NIA has said in a 50-page charge-sheet that there is strong evidence that Lashkar trained and sent terrorists to India to carry out attacks in many cities including Delhi.

"There is strong and clinching evidence on how LeT terrorists were sent across the border to India," said Alok Mittal, top NIA officer.

He said Bahadur Ali was trained in Pakistan and given weapons and GPS devices through which he communicated with his handlers in Pakistan. A pocket diary found on Ali had the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir and also Delhi, the charge-sheet says.

21-year-old Bahadur Ali was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir in July last year. Investigators put out his eight-minute confession video, in which he spoke about being trained by Lashkar and Pakistani forces to cause unrest in Kashmir.

In the video, he is heard saying that his handlers in Pakistan told him that "Lashkar cadre have been successful in creating unrest after Burhan Wani was killed". Ali revealed that he went through three training sessions and was assigned to "mingle with locals and create trouble" during protests in the Kashmir Valley after Wani, a 22-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist, was killed on July 8.

The NIA says its investigation reveals the LeT has set up "well-organized machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan, as part of a conspiracy to wage war against India" with terrorist acts.

Bahadur Ali infiltrated into India along with two associates on June 12-13, armed to the teeth with weapons, navigation equipment and combat material. Investigators say they walked for seven days using a coded grid and GPS devices. When they reached Handwara, Ali's two companions were killed. He says he then mingled with locals and hid till he was caught.

A school dropout, Ali, is from a village in Raiwind, Lahore.