The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken custody of the five militants who allegedly facilitated the escape of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Taiba commander, Mohammad Naveed Jatt, alias Hanzillah, from Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital on February 6.
The five militants—Shakeel Ahmed Bhat, Tika Khan, Syed Tajamul Islam, Mohammad Shafi Wani and Jan Muhammad Ganai—will now stay in NIA custody.
Two policemen were killed when Laskar militants attacked a three-member police team that was accompanying Jatt for a medical check-up at SHMS hospital.
After the attack, Jatt, a resident of Multan in Pakistani Punjab, escaped from the hospital.
He was first transferred to Abdullah Bridge by two Lashkar men on a motorbike and then to Kakpora in Pulwama by other militants in a car.
The police, however, succeeded in arresting the five Laskar militants who executed the plan to free Jatt within hours after checking the CCTV footage.
Jatt, who had told interrogator in 2014 that he had trained with Ajmal Kasab, who was caught alive during 26/11 attack in Mumbai, and another militant, however, had left the hideout at Kakpora before the police reached there.
The NIA was granted a transit remand of the five men for two days by a court of chief judicial magistrate in Srinagar on Thursday.
The NIA will present the accused before a special court in Jammu on Friday for seeking their custody. The premier investigative agency had taken over the case from JK police on February 12.
Jammu and Kashmir government has suspended superintendent of police of Srinagar Central Jail after it emerged that the plan to free Jatt was hatched in the jail. The militant, who helped Jatt escape, was in touch with him on phone and had visited him in jail. As a consequence, the police has decided that all prisoners and militants in jail, will now be treated at police hospital only.
