Srinagar, May 1: British journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, whose latest book on Kashmir The Meadow has created ripples have claimed that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar was the blue-eyed boy of the Congress government during P V Narasimha Rao’s tenure.

Digging into the secret files of the J&K Police crime branch that probed the kidnapping of five western tourists in 1995, in their book, The Meadow, the authors have claimed that the then Congress government was hand in glove with militants.

“To prepare for the J&K polls, the Rao government made the pro-government militia strike an alliance with Azhar’s ultra-radical outfit Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) to decimate Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) from the south Kashmir mountains. Azhar was then general secretary of HuA, which fathered the Taliban in Afghanistan. He set up JeM after his release in Kandahar,” the Mumbai based daily DNA quoted authors as having said.

Talking to DNA from London, Levy said the kidnapping proved to be a turning point for the separatist movement in Kashmir.

Quoting senior officials, the book has claimed that someone in Delhi, realising the diplomatic benefits, wanted to prolong the kidnapping drama and thereby sabotage inspector-general of police Rajinder Tikoo’s attempts for their release by selectively leaking details of negotiations to the press. So distraught was chief negotiator Tikoo by this betrayal that he left the assignment and went on a long leave.

The crime branch file quotes its mole as saying, “The Al-Faran had handed over hostages to RR and STF-backed renegades led by Nabi Azad. On December 24, 1995, they received new orders. We gathered up the hostages and walked them out into the snow. There was (only) one end waiting for them, and we all knew it. No one could risk the hostages being released and complain of the collusion, having seen uniforms and STF jeeps… (There was a) possibility that they had understood (everything).”

If this was not enough, a deep penetration agent of J&K Police crime squad, code named ‘Agent A’, assigned to report on the hostages’ movements, was killed by the RR men who declared him a militant. Investigating officer found how the information dried up with the agent’s death, sabotaging efforts to rescue the tourists.

The book also throws light on the killing of Mirwaiz of South Kashmir, Qazi Nisar, much respected by HuA’s local commander Sikander, at the instance of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). The IB fed information to the HM militants that Nisar was collaborating with the government to actively canvass against militancy. After Qazi Nisar was assassinated Islamabad (Anantnag) was plunged into bloody clashes between the two militant groups.

Refusing to comment on the revelations made in the book, J&K Congress chief Prof Saifudin Soz stressed the need to forget, move forward and reconcile for the sake of peace in Kashmir. Soz, who was one of the important political figures during the hostage crises, admitted that people have experienced unmatched sufferings in the state over the past two decades.

“It was a difficult time. People lived dangerously. I don’t know what the authors have said. Their claim of then government agencies teaming up with militants to decimate another militant group cannot be blamed on the party. How is Congress, as a party, in the picture?” he asked.

Courtesy DNA