On the morning of May 29, police personnel while conducting patrolling duty at Dhalli area of Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir heard a sound in the sky around 6-7am. The men spotted what appeared to be a drone coming from the Pakistan side towards Indian territory.

On noticing the flying object, the police party fired 13-14 rounds towards it, and it fell to the ground in an open field. On close inspection, a black hexacopter with a payload wrapped in golden tape was found. A bomb-detection squad (BDS) from Kathua and one from Jammu were called to the spot.

The two teams separated the payload from the hexacopter. The Jammu BDS opened it and found seven Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL) shells and an equal number of magnetic bombs.

The National Investigation Agency, Jammu, has taken over the case (registered as RC- 06/2022/NIA/JMU on 30.07.2022) under the directions of the Government of India.

Sinister Plan

The terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in cahoots with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistan Army has been sending weapons, ammunition, and explosives across the border via drones, officials said.

The LeT radicalises and recruits jihadists in J&K who receive the drone deliveries. Further, LeT terrorists under the banner of The Resistance Front (TRF) execute targeted killings of non-locals and persons belonging to the region’s minority communities using hybrid terrorists.

The ISI does the ‘target selection’ and arranges weapons and money, and hands them over to LeT terrorists.

Terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s son, Talha, supervised the entire operation from Pakistan.

Talha was designated as an ‘individual terrorist’ by the Indian home ministry in April 2022.

Terror Spearhead

Launch commander Sajid Jatt organised deliveries through his cadre operating under assumed names (Albert alias Hamza alias Raymond Green alias Donald Green).

Sajid Jatt infiltrated J&K in 2005 and was actively involved in several terrorist attacks in the Kashmir valley. In order to camouflage his activities, he married a local Kashmiri woman named Shabbira Kuchay (d/o Ab. Salam r/o Kulgam).

Sajid used to live with his Kashmiri wife at Yaripora. In 2007, the couple fled to Lahore, Pakistan, via Nepal, leaving behind a 15-day-old child, Umar Raja Farooq. Umar later visited his parents in Pakistan.

Sajid Jatt was critical in rejuvenating Lashkar in south Kashmir and in the creation of LeT offshoot The Resistance Front (TRF) after Pakistan was grey-listed by FATF.

According to sources, the Pakistan Army and Rangers facilitate drone deliveries in J&K. The drone handlers need to be physically very close to the border (IB or LoC). They generally operate drones using remote controls, sitting in the Pakistani security posts on the border.