A major intelligence lapse has come to light after it was revealed that Sheikh Sajjad Gul — identified as the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack — had once stayed in Kerala to pursue a lab technician’s course.
The Kerala police were reportedly unaware of his presence in the state until recently, raising serious questions about intelligence tracking.
While the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has not disclosed the specific timeline or location of Gul’s stay in Kerala, the revelation has put the state’s intelligence unit under scrutiny. According to officials, even now the police remain in the dark on when and where Gul camped during his time in the state.
Following the completion of the lab technician’s course, Gul went on to establish a diagnostic laboratory in Kashmir that primarily served terrorist operatives. He is currently the head of The Resistance Front (TRF), a terror outfit believed to be backed by Pakistan’s ISI. The TRF had claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack.
Gul, a 50-year-old Kashmiri, has emerged as the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack, which claimed the lives of 26 people on April 22, officials said on Wednesday.
Said to be holed up in the Cantonment town of Rawalpindi under the patronage of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Gul, who also goes by the alias of Sajjad Ahmed Sheikh, has planned a number of terror attacks, including targeted killings between 2020 and 2024 in central and south Kashmir, grenade attacks in central Kashmir in 2023, ambush of Jammu and Kashmir police personnel in Bijbehra in Anantnag and the Z-Morh Tunnel attack in Ganderbal.
The NIA had designated him a terrorist in April 2022 and announced a reward of ₹10 lakh on his head. The official said that during the investigation into the April 22 Pahalgam attack, some links and communications had been traced back to Gul.
A police source told The Telegraph that during his work as an overground worker of the TRF, Gul was caught by the special cell of the Delhi police in 2002 from Nizamuddin railway station with 5kg of RDX. He was said to be conducting a recce and conspiring to carry out serial blasts in the national capital, for which he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on August 7, 2003.
On his release from prison, Gul went to Rawalpindi and underwent training under the ISI and then formed the TRF. It’s not known whether Gul had camped in Kerala after his release from prison.
P. Vijayan, the additional director-general of police (intelligence) of the Kerala police, said: “We came to know of Sajjad Gul’s so-called presence in Kerala only on Wednesday. But our investigation over the last 24 hours has not revealed anything. I can’t say whether the terrorist’s stint in Kerala was highly secretive or not. Only a proper investigation can shed light on it.”