For 33 year old Ashaq Ahmad Nengroo, a normal day meant ferrying trucks from Kashmir to rest of India for transportation of various goods. The long journey often took him to New Delhi, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Though sometimes as far as Tripura in the north east, down south in Chennai and even Nanded in Maharashtra. Nengroo owned three trucks and operated from South Kashmir’s Pulwama where he stayed in the Hajan Bala village of Rajpora.

For years the business went well for Nengroo until September last year. On September 12, 2018 while his younger brother Reyaz Nengroo was driving a truck from Hiranagar near Jammu towards South Kashmir, the security forces intercepted the vehicle on the highway. While Reyaz was arrested by the Jammu & Kashmir Police, the security forces were shocked to find three terrorists with heavy arms in the vehicle who managed to flee from the spot after firing at the forces and injuring a local. The three Pakistani terrorists were being transported from the International Border in Jammu towards South Kashmir in Ashaq’s truck while Ashaq was moving behind in his car monitoring every move of the truck on the highway.

After a massive search operation, security forces managed to corner the three Pakistani terrorists at Jhajjar Kotli near Jammu next day and neutralised them in an encounter that lasted many hours. Ashaq Nengroo however managed to escape from the spot and further used the same international border in Jammu to cross-over to Pakistan after the NIA tightened their noose over his terror network and raided his Pulwama house in October 2018. Reyaz however wasn’t as lucky as his elder brother and is now locked inside Jammu’s Kot Balwal Jail and booked for terror funding and assisting infiltration of terrorists into India.

Months before India shook to the horror of the Pulwama sucide attack on February 14, 2019 in which 40 CRPF men were killed, Ashaq Nengroo, according to sources within the NIA, ‘used his three trucks to ferry freshly infiltrated terrorists from Jammu border to the Kashmir valley. From October 2017 to September 2018 before fleeing to Pakistan he transported 33 Jaish-e-Muhammad Pakistani terrorists from Jammu border to Kashmir valley in his trucks’.

The association of Ashaq Nengroo with Pakistan based terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad however wasn’t new. Nengroo’s second younger brother Mohammad Abbas inspired by the Harkat-ul-Ansar Commander Sajjad Afghani had joined as an Over Ground Worker (OGW) for the Jaish-e-Muhammad years ago before joining the terror ranks. Abbas, as a battalion commander of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, who was responsible for threatening several Panchs and Sarpanchs of Pulwama and Budgam districts in 2013 had also killed local cops and Kashmiris in South Kashmir.

On June 7, 2013, Jammu & Kashmir Police assisted by the Army laid a Cordon and Search Operation in Hergam village of Rajpora in Pulwama of South Kashmir. Mohammad Abbas was holed up in a house of a local Abdul Had Wani and finally neutralised in an encounter that lasted several hours.

For years Ashaq Nengroo went unnoticed by the agencies. Sources reveal, ‘Ashaq played as a double agent at times to win trust of security agencies. He gave information to Jammu & Kashmir Police and the Indian Army which helped eliminate 1-2 terrorists in Pulwama’. There however was a larger game under motion behind the scenes.

‘WAITING FOR, jEM (sic)’, wrote, Ashaq Nengroo, on his Facebook status on February 8th 2017. The status which again went unnoticed became almost like a clarion call to the masters across the border. The Facebook timeline of Nengroo today shows several posts in last few years of his sadness over the death of his younger brother Muhammad Abbas. In one such photograph Abbas can be seen brandishing an AK-47 while in another he is seen in a hilly terrain with thick foliage behind.

Today sitting at an undisclosed location in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (Pok), ‘Nengroo is actively working with JeM leadership and is instrumental in infiltration of several Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorists through Jammu and Punjab borders along with arms and ammunition’, reveals a senior officer of the NIA investigating the case.

Security top brass in New Delhi now believes that Ashaq Nengroo who is well-versed with Jammu and Punjab International border has been introduced to Khalistani groups by the Pakistan ISI to push arms and ammunitions using drones through the Punjab border.

Early morning on September 12, Jammu & Kashmir Police arrested three terrorists along with six AK-47 rifles at the Lakhanpur border between Jammu and Punjab. The interrogation of the arrested terrorists revealed the cross-border conspiracy between ISI, Khalistani groups and the Jaish-e-Muhammad to send in arms and ammunitions for terror strikes in India.

On a tip off soon after on September 22, Punjab Police busted a terror module in Tarn Taran by arresting four Khalistani terrorists along with 5 AK-47 rifles, 9 hand grenades, satellite phones and other arms which the Police believed were delivered from across the border recently through drones. Police revealed the role of banned Khalistani groups Babbar Khalsa and Khalistan Zindabad Force assisted by the Pakistan ISI in this latest terror module. The case was soon after handed over to the NIA by the Punjab Government due the cross-border element and wider terror funding conspiracy.

With communication lines snapped across Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad’s Kashmir hand Nengroo is using human intelligence and ground knowledge in Jammu and Punjab with active assistance of the ISI to revive terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. While Nengroo remains a headache for the security agencies in India, agencies do not rule out possibility of several such sleeper cells and OGWs working at the behest of ISI and JeM in Jammu & Kashmir and the neighbouring border areas. As huge cache of arms and ammunitions, with new terrorists being pumped in, continues to be traced and busted along the border, the terror nexus and bloodshed in Jammu & Kashmir is far from over.