Srinagar:
Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah today said that the Delhi Police has failed to explain how a man returning to India with his wife and children was on a terror mission. "If a man comes to attack a shopping mall, will he come with his wife and children? I am hearing for the first time that a militant came to attack holding the hand of his wife and carrying weapons in the other hand, as if going for a picnic."
Last week's arrest of Sayed Liyaqat Shah by the Delhi Police has created a political firestorm. The Jammu and Kashmir government says he was a militant who was headed home from Pakistan as part of an amnesty and rehabilitation scheme for men who had crossed in Pakistan. The Delhi Police insists that Liyaqat entered India via Nepal to execute a terror attack in the capital to coincide with the festival of Holi.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has said the National Investigative Agency will study the case, a demand made over the weekend by the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. (
Read: NIA to probe arrest of alleged terrorist Liyaqat) Mr Abdullah has emphasized that the Liyaqat case could undermine the crucial surrender policy and discourage others from using it.
Sources say the centre, which sanctioned the amnesty scheme in 2010, wants to review the policy partly to ensure better coordination between different agencies.
The Delhi Police has said that if Jammu and Kashmir officials had cleared Liyaqat's return, they failed to inform anyone else including those manning the border where he crossed into India.
Liyaqat's wife, Akhtar-ul-Nisa, has said that he flew with her and her teen daughter from an earlier marriage on Pakistani passports to Kathmandu in Nepal and that he was separated from them and arrested at the border.