NEW DELHI: This was one “goodwill gesture” which spectacularly boomeranged on the UPA government. Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) terrorist Shahid Latif, chief handler of the fidayeen squad that attacked the Pathankot airbase in January, was released by India in 2010 as part of the Manmohan Singh government’s effort to repair ties with Pakistan.High-level sources told TOI that 47-year-old Latif, who was in an Indian jail for 11 years for acts of terrorism, was among 25 militants belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and JeM who were freed on May 28, 2010, as part of the Centre’s outreach to the hostile neighbour. They were lodged in jails in Jammu, Srinagar, Agra, Varanasi, Naini (UP) and Tihar, and were deported to Pakistan through Wagah.Interestingly, Latif’s release was sought by the same Jaish terrorists who had hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 and managed to get their chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, freed along with two others in exchange for 154 passengers in December 1999. However, the then Vajpayee government had refused to release Latif and 31 others on Jaish’s “wish list”.Latif acts as main handler of JeM terrorists in IndiaIn 1999, the NDA government freed Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar and Omar Sheikh, an alumnus of London School of Economics who courted further notoriety by kidnapping and killing American journalist Daniel Pearl.The AI hijack plot was conceived and executed with the support of ISI. However, what the Pakistani spy agency and its terrorist proxies could not accomplish by taking innocent passengers hostage, they managed to achi- eve by guile — by persuading the Manmohan Singh government that the release of Pakistanis detained in Indian jails on terror charges would be received well with their constituents and help create a conducive atmosphere for rapprochement.In the wake of the IC-814 hijacking and the attack on Parliament in 2001 by a Jaish module, Latif was shifted from a prison in J&K to Varanasi central jail in 2002 because of the assessment that his comrades could make another effort to free him.A resident of More in Aminabad town of Gujranwala in Pakistan, Latif, according to sources in intelligence agencies, is considered very close to Masood Azhar and plays an important role in the Jaish hierarchy as he heads the Sialkot region and is the main handler, launching JeM cadres into India.Latif is wanted by NIA as the ‘handler’ of the four fidayeen — identified as Nasir Hussain, Hafiz Abu Bakar, Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum, residents of Punjab and Sindh districts of Pakistan — who stormed Pathankot airbase on January 2. Sources said Latif arranged the weapons, clothes and shoes of the jihadis apart from SOS injections and medicines, food packets and other logistics.Meanwhile, the NIA approached Pakistan three days ago through a letter rogatory (LR) asking it to provide DNA samples of family members of the four fidayeen and JeM members, including Latif, involved in the attack. Apart from Latif, Kashif Jaan and Abdul Rauf (Masood Azhar’s brother) have been identified as co-planners of the attack. This is the second LR sent by NIA to Pakistan in the last five months seeking assistance.