Delhi terror plan: How the ISI got a 'vulnerable teen' and groomed him

Police in Delhi have given out details of how a Pakistani terrorist nabbed in the city has been living in India for over a decade under a fake identity. And how the ISI had caught him young and groomed him for terror plans across the border.

40-year-old Mohammad Ashraf alias Ali Ahmed Noorie, a resident of Naroval in Pakistan's Punjab province, was arrested from East Delhi's Laxmi Nagar on Tuesday. He is suspected to be involved in terror strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India in the past.

Delhi Police said that preliminary interrogation revealed that Ashraf had been acting as head of a sleeper cell in India and was assigned to carry out terror strikes during the festival season at the behest of Pakistan's ISI.


The interrogation also revealed how a 'vulnerable' Ashraf was spotted by the ISI in 2001 and radicalised and recruited for terror activities.

Ashraf lost both his parents when he was in his tenth grade, was trying to eke out a living with his brothers, when he started receiving aid from an unknown agency, He was slowly radicalised, and by the end of 2003, he was taken to a camp by the ISI and trained in the use of weapons.

In 2004, he was flown to Dhaka with other recruits, smuggled across the border into Siliguri, and after a few weeks of stay in Kolkata, asked to proceed to Ajmer.

“At Ajmer, Ashraf befriended a maulvi at a local mosque and stayed there for two years. In 2006, he accompanied the maulvi to Delhi and started tilawat (prayer job) in factories in the Walled City. He met other relatives of the maulvi and won their trust. He then started receiving money from his ISI handler Nasir by Western Union Money Transfer through the IDs of the maulvi’s relatives,” said DCP (Special Cell) Pramod Kushwaha.

In north Delhi, he got identity cards made, moved to Ghaziabad, where he married a woman to use her documents to get a ration card, and then moved to Katihar in Bihar where he got a certificate of residence from the village pradhan.

During interrogation by a team led by ACPs Lalit Mohan Negi and Hriday Bhushan, Ali revealed that he moved to Jammu and Kashmir around 2009 on the instructions of his handler.

A tip off suggested that Ali had been involved in a case where soldiers had been brutalised before being killed. He is being interrogated about it. He was also given the task of gunrunning and placing IEDs.

“Ashraf came to India via Bangladesh and had been staying in the country for over a decade as Ali Ahmed Noorie," said Kushwaha.

In raids following his arrest, one AK-47 assault rifle, one hand grenade, two magazines of AK-47 along with 60 rounds, two sophisticated China-made pistols along with 50 rounds, and one Indian passport and other Indian IDs obtained on forged documents were recovered.