Ashraf Ali: Cops foil Delhi terror plan; How Ashraf Ali was indoctrinated by ISI ‘talent spotter’ in Pakistan | Delhi News

NEW DELHI: In the winter of 2001, a “talent spotter” for the Pakistani spy agency ISI laid his eyes on a teenager named Ashraf Ali, who lived in village Kotli Sidhwan in Narowal district. The Class X passout was deemed “vulnerable” by the spotter, code-named Zafar, because Ali’s parents had died within a few months of each other leaving him and his two brothers to fend for themselves and also look after their three sisters.
Ali’s father, Umardeen, a shoe factory worker in Lahore, had barely left anything behind. The family was pleasantly surprised when they started receiving financial aid from an unknown entity. For the next two years, they got money regularly even as Ali and his brothers, Farooq and Saleem, worked to get things back on track.

All this while, Ali was being motivated and radicalised to join jihad and was eventually convinced to work for ISI. Towards the end of 2003, Ali was taken to a camp and trained in weaponry and literature under his handler, code-named Nasir. The boy was finally “ready” in the spring of 2004, after which he was flown to Dhaka with the other recruits.
According to Delhi Police, Ali was first kept in Mirpur and then smuggled into India via Siliguri in West Bengal. He had no weapons or explosives on him and was given instructions to lie low. For a few weeks, he remained in Kolkata, after which he left for Ajmer. He was briefed about various Indian cities, routes and espionage techniques to facilitate his stay, he revealed during the interrogation.
“At Ajmer, Ali 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 with the help of the owner of his rented room. “He lived there for six months. My father got his Aadhaar Card made for documentation. After he left, we lost touch with him. If needed, we will cooperate with the police,” said Uzaib, Ali’s former landlord’s son.
The neighbours could not recall noticing any unusual activities. “He lived in lane number 4 of Aram Park 15 years ago. He said he worked at a shop in Laxmi Nagar. He had rented the room for about seven months. He went to work in the morning and returned late,” said a local resident.
In 2007, Ali shifted to Ghaziabad where he got married to a woman named Badurnissa who lived in a JJ cluster in Vaishali. However, this marriage was a sham as Ali wanted to get a ration card made using the marriage documents. He deserted the woman in 4-5 months and moved to Katihar, Bihar. There, he got a certificate of residence made by a village pradhan. Using these documents, he got a passport.
During interrogation by a team led by ACPs Lalit Mohan Negi and Hriday Bhushan, Ali revealed that he moved to J&K around 2009 on the instructions of his handler.
Intelligence sources said Ali remained in the Valley for the next eight years during which he was used for a range of tasks, including placement of IEDs and gunrunning for terror operatives. A source said they were probing a tip-off which suggested that Ali was involved in incidents where soldiers had been brutalised before being killed. He is being interrogated in this regard.
Over the years, Ali was in regular touch with his handler through different communication channels, but talks about assignments were mainly through email drafts. Of late, he had been using Telegram to communicate with weapon suppliers, which was intercepted by police.