NEW DELHI: Unravelling the ISI’s direct “handling” of Indian Mujahideen (IM), arrested IM mastermind Yasin Bhatkal has told NIA how the Pakistani spy agency takes care of funding, training and resources for attacks in India, besides zeroing in on the places to be targeted. The execution of terror strikes, however, is left almost entirely to IM.

According to officials tracking Bhatkal’s interrogation, he has not been too forthcoming on Lashker-e-Taiba ’s (LeT) linkages with IM. The top IM operative claimed that ISI, and not LeT, had imparted him training for two months in Pakistan in 2006, which covered handling of explosives, assembling of bombs, indoctrinating young Muslims and covert operations. ISI officials facilitated his entry and exit from Pakistan at the time, put him up at the spy agency’s safe house in Karachi and ensured that he travelled under heavy security cover.

If Bhatkal’s account is anything to go by, ISI directly instructs IM to carry out terror strikes in India. LeT offers its resources where needed, but ISI prefers to directly communicate terror plots to IM in the interest of operational secrecy and maintaining its supremacy as the primary mastermind.

Bhatkal has revealed that around half a dozen top IM leaders, including Riyaz Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal, Amir Reza Khan, Mohammad ‘Bada’ Sajid, Dr Shahnawaz, are based in Karachi, living in safe houses provided by the ISI. Many of them have married Pakistani women and live with their families.

Though ISI remains the primary source of IM funding, it also receives contributions from organizations and religious trusts supporting the cause of jihad.

Of late, IM has been under pressure from Pakistan-based al-Qaeda elements to delink from the ISI, which is driven more by statecraft and Islamabad’s own interests, and align with al-Qaeda that is focused on the “religious” aspects of jihad.

Sources familiar with Bhatkal’s interrogation have revealed that the IM mastermind has been extremely careful and calibrated in his responses; he has preferred to reveal only on the lines of NIA’s findings so far, while claiming ignorance about aspects that can unravel new facts. NIA, however, is not taking his disclosures at face value, including his denial of IM role in Bodh Gaya blasts.

“The modus operandi and nature of explosives used in Body Gaya bore the imprint of IM, though it is possible that some local affiliate could be involved,” an official investigating the blasts pointed out.