Mehraj-ud-din Dand; (above) In this AFP picture of December 30, 1999, Taliban commandos ride in the rear of a truck towards the hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft which stands on the tarmac at Kandahar Airport

Srinagar, Sept. 13: Jammu police have arrested a Nepal-based militant they claim is a Dawood Ibrahim accomplice who played a role in the 1999 Kandahar hijack along with an unidentified envoy in Kathmandu.

Mehraj-ud-din Dand, reportedly picked up in the past week, allegedly used diplomatic channels in Nepal to smuggle fake currency, arms and ammunition into India.

“He said he was there (in Kathmandu) in 1999. He says an unspecified embassy diplomat, whom I will not name at this stage, was deeply involved (in the hijacking). He came into contact with the diplomat during his stay in Nepal and both had deep ties,” Jammu police chief Dilbagh Singh said.

Speculation about the identity of the envoy swirled around Pakistan’s Arshad Cheema, who was arrested in Nepal in 2001 after RDX was recovered from his car and was later deported to Islamabad.

Singh said he suspected Mehraj’s services were utilised in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999, but added that the suspect had “not authentically admitted his direct involvement in it (the hijacking)”. Another officer said Mehraj was suspected to have provided the five Pakistani hijackers fake travel documents.

New Delhi had to free top militant bosses Maulana Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh to secure the release of the over 170 passengers on the plane.

In Delhi, home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said “we have to confirm the reports (about Mehraj)”. “If correct, I congratulate Jammu and Kashmir police.”

Police chief Singh, too, indicated that the information gleaned from Mehraj was being cross-checked and that his team was in touch with the agencies investigating the hijacking to verify his claims.

Singh said in response to a question that Mehraj’s name was not mentioned in the CBI challan in the hijack case but appeared to suggest that it may have been because the 49-year-old used multiple identities. “His name does not figure in the challan. He has acquired half a dozen fake names for various operations. So, the investigations are on.”

But Mehraj’s family, based in north Kashmir’s Sopore, claimed he was innocent, insisting he was a regular visitor to the Valley and had come this time at their insistence for treatment.

Mehraj kept coming to Delhi from Nepal by faking his identity, Singh said, and added that the suspect claimed to have met Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Anees in Karachi in 1997.

“He claims he had good relations with the D-company…after returning from Pakistan, he handled Dawood’s hawala operations in Delhi. The weapons being transported into Delhi and other places in India through Nepal were sent by the D-company and the ISI and he was using diplomatic channels in that country for that,” Singh said.

Mehraj used fake passports to visit Pakistan six times and was a close associate of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen boss Syed Salahuddin, police chief Singh said. On one occasion, Hurriyat leader (Syed Ali Shah) Geelani had helped Mehraj secure a Pakistani visa by writing a recommendation, Singh added.

Sopore police have described Mehraj as a militant missing since 1993 but based in Pakistan. “It was not known that he had returned several times and stayed in Delhi, Saharanpur and Bangalore until his cover was blown after his associate Aleem was arrested,” Singh said.

But Mehraj’s brother Abdul Rasheed questioned the claims. “He was arrested in 1991 (for militant links) and released in 1995. He stayed here (in the Valley) for some months and later left for Nepal to do business. In 1998, he married a Nepali girl and they have a 10-year-old daughter.”

Rasheed said his brother has come to Kashmir on several occasions, the last in 2010. “He once brought his family. He stayed with us and if he had militant links, why didn’t the police arrest him then?”

This time, Rasheed said the family was perturbed after Mehraj left the Valley on September 9. The next day, the family called the driver of the vehicle in which Mehraj was travelling. “He told us that he was picked up by some men in civvies at Katra (Jammu),” Rasheed said.