IB inputs on LeT man not pursued

DREADED TERRORIST Salim Salar, was gunned down by the UP Police.

However, the success story raises a question:  Why did the UP Police never act on the inputs being provided by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), on Salar,  to STF, for the past three years. According to highly placed sources, the UP Police’s indifference to those reports only helped the militant establish a  network of Lashkar throughout the state.

The Salar’s outfits specialise in tapping well-educated Muslim youths. The sources said Salar had network on the Aligarh Muslim University campus, too.

Salar had shifted his base to AMU in 2000, at the insistence of LeT chief Abu Shamas Saifullah, to support the militants coming from Nepal. Salar moved into an AMU hostel to keep a tab on the outfits working on specified guidelines. He murdered  a notorious criminal of Aligarh Pervez Mental and his aide Chandu from Mainpuri in 2001.

The outlaws were inimical to some students whom Salar’s men were trying to catch. Following the incident of murder, he sent least 20 boys to various LeT camps. His re-emergence alarmed the intelligence sleuths who made desperate attempts to track him down.

A sleuth who was closely associated with the operation remembers: “We wanted to arrest Salar on the campus but the cops fled for fear of trouble.”  After this,  Salar unleashed of reign of terror in and around Agra.

He was operating in Saharanpur, Meerut, Bijnore and Ghaziabad. Following the October incident in Delhi, the Intelligence Bureau was searching for him and the Delhi Police even declared a cash reward on his head.

While the UP Police were regularly briefed about the activities of Salar,  the STF,  the operational arm for the intelligence agencies, did not act on those reports.