NEW DELHI : Suspected Hizbul Mujahideen militant Liyaqat Shah, who was arrested by the Delhi Police, will be released if he is found to have come from PoK with the genuine intention to surrender, Union Home Secretary R K Singh said today.
Singh said the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which was recently handed over the probe in the case, will investigate “where the truth lies” amid conflicting versions by the Delhi police and Jammu and Kashmir police on his arrest from near the Indo-Nepal border.
“The case (of Liyaqat) has been given to NIA to investigate. They will investigate and they will find out where the truth lies. Whether he (Liyaqat) was coming for genuinely surrendering or whether there was some game behind it…Whatever…It will all be clarified.
“And if he (Liyaqat) was coming to genuinely surrender, our attempt would be to release him to join his family as soon as possible,” Singh said on the sidelines of an event of paramilitary Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) here. SSB) guards the 1,751 km-long Indo-Nepal open frontier.
NIA will conduct a probe into the circumstances leading to the arrest of Shah from near the Indo-Nepal border by the Delhi Police which had claimed that it had foiled a ‘fidayeen’ (suicide) attack in the capital with his arrest ahead of Holi.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had said that Shah was returning from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to surrender as part of a militant rehabilitation policy and demanded a probe by NIA.
After the event, Singh, however refrained from making a statement on whether the Home Ministry would accord the “martyr” status to the paramilitary personnel killed in the line of duty.
“The jawans who are killed while rendering duties for the protection of the country are martyrs. We call them martyrs,” Singh said in his brief reply.
He also said the forces and the security establishment “learn lessons” to strategise better in the aftermath of any major incident like the 2010 killing of 76 security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada. (AGENCIES)
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