ISI has unveiled elusive
terrorist
Farhatullah Ghori, the
mastermind
of many terror attacks including the one on Akshardham temple in Gujarat's Gandhi Nagar in 2002, by getting him to release a video where he calls for a
war against India
.
Ghori
has been on the Indian agencies' cross-hairs after probe into multiple terror attacks revealed his finger prints.
Last year, Delhi Police's special cell had come on record to say that the
Islamic State inspired module
busted by them was being run by Ghori who was impersonating an
IS recruiter
.
Ghori appeared to have vanished until 2019 when he was found active on Telegram and other encrypted chat applications, releasing a string of videos to brainwash youths, all the while remaining invisible. The
online radicalisation campaigns
prompted the agencies to go after him. Ghori who goes by the aliases of Abu Sufian and Sardar belongs to Hyderabad. He was designated an individual terrorist by the Indian home ministry in 2020. Undeterred, he continued to work from Lahore in the shadows and never came to the fore. Even the US and the Interpol could never get a photo of him.
His video appearance, intelligence sources suspect, could be meant as an
ISI plot
to disrupt communal harmony in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. "Most of the high-profile terrorists are under watch and Pakistan has been playing safe with the FATF sword hanging over them. With Ghori coming to the fore now, Pakistan could escape responsibility claiming that he was an Indian on the run and as usual deny his presence on their soil," an intelligence officer said.
In the last two years, Indian intelligence agencies have blocked Facebook pages and Telegram channels being used by Ghori. The Telangana counter-intelligence unit had also intensified its manhunt against the preacher. Sources said Ghori and his team had not only been brainwashing youths in the name of IS but also made pages of JeM and al-Qaida to attract youths. "He also acts as a terror financier and has been using a network of accounts on Facebook, Telegram and YouTube to call on Muslim youths in India to revolt against the country. Those selected for the test tasks are even wired small amounts through hawala," said an anti-terror cop.
English (US) ·