Retired Lt Colonel Muhammad Habib Zahir who disappeared from Lumbini near Nepal’s border with India and now suspected to be in Indian custody, was in the team that nabbed Kulbhushan Jadhav in March 2016, The Indian Express newspaper has reported.
Citing unnamed sources in Indian security establishment, the media outlet reported that Indian agencies had been on Zahir’s trail for long. He was last seen in Lumbini. Monday’s announcement of the Pakistan military court’s decision to award the death penalty to Jadhav, sources said, was tied to the disappearance of Zahir. “Zahir was at the Indo-Nepal border last week. He was in the team that had trailed Jadhav. There is definitely a connection between the two cases,” an officer said.
“No sooner did the Pakistani authorities learn of Zahir’s disappearance, Jadhav was pronounced guilty of being a spy. The purpose is clear. They didn’t want any Indian agency to go public,” the officer said. Zahir retired from the Pakistan Army on in 2014 but was said to have been engaged thereafter by the ISI for its covert operations. In 2015, he picked up conversations between Jadhav and his family members and started tracking him, sources said. “Jadhav used an Indian passport issued in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel to carry out his dhow business in Iran.
Pakistani agencies heard him speaking to his family members in Marathi. Zahir started trailing Jadhav. A trap was laid and Jadhav was apprehended in March 2016,” the officer said. Sources said Zahir was lured to Nepal with the promise of a “big catch”. The man who turned in Zahir connected with him through a UK phone number to pass “information on a mole”. He met Zahir a couple of times in Oman. “Zahir arrived in Oman on April 2 and reached Kathmandu the next day.
On his arrival in Nepal, he was handed over a SIM card at Bhairawa. Zahir was told that this was to facilitate his communication with a point person. From there, he was made to travel to Lumbini near the border,” the officer said. Zahir’s family also told the press in Pakistan that he was likely picked by an “enemy spy” agency.
Personally I would not give any credance to the report from the Indian Express, I suspect the Indians have this innocent retired army officer and now the Indians are seeking a connection so that they can exchange their spy for an innocent Pakistani.
You purchase an Indian citizen from the Afghan Taliban which kidnapped him from Iran and then call him a Indian intelligence agent.
This was reported by one of your own journalists in Afghanistan.
How can you guys not comprehend that an intelligence agent does not carry his home country passport?
The very fact that Jadhav is denied consular access itself goes on to prove that Pakistanis are at their illegal best again.
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